The Clarke County Board of Education is considering changes to policies about school councils at each of the school district’s schools, but they’re not the big changes that may come later, Clarke County School Superintendent Philip Lanoue told board members Thursday.
The changes to policy governing the advisory school councils are more on the order of tidying up or changing policies to be in line with new state laws as the school board’s policy committee works its way through the school board’s hefty policy manual.
School districts are required to have the councils by a state law that dates back to the beginning of the century.
Clarke’s school councils should be seven members, including two parents, two business people, two teachers and the school’s principal, according to current policy. But that would change slightly under proposed changes to the policy. The council would include four parents, two of whom should be businesspeople; state law requires a majority of the council to be parents. The four parents would be elected by parents, and the two teachers elected by teachers.
In addition, the chair of the committee must be a parent, under the proposed changes, and the council would have authority to grow beyond seven members, as long as parents remain in the majority.
And instead of offering advice when the school superintendent is hiring a new principal for a school, selection committees would include at least one member of the advisory council.
The proposed changes, if the board adopts them, might not last long.
The school board earlier this year asked the state Board of Education to let the Clarke school system become a so-called charter school district. That would allow the school district to depart from some state rules, such as prescriptions on how money must be spent.
State officials have yet to make a decision on Clarke’s charter application, and state officials might not agree to all the proposed waivers Clarke is asking for, such as a method for teacher evaluation that differs from the state-prescribed system.
School advisory councils would be replaced with groups called “local school governance teams,” and unlike school councils, the governance teams would have limited but real decision-making powers.
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