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As Rockbridge County students head back to school this year, they will be under a new set of disciplinary guidelines.
These changes were announced at a School Board meeting last week.
The goal, as Superintendent Phillip Thompson explained to the Board, is to make sure all schools in the district are addressing issues in the same way.
“We’ve worked really hard to be the same on things that are essential,” he said. “We want to be consistent with protocols in response to student discipline.”
To achieve this goal, a new set of guidelines were written for Rockbridge schools, laying out a response plan by infraction type, as well as by whether it’s a student’s first, second, or third offence.
These responses range from a conference with an administrator to suspensions to potential involvement of the School Board.
The updated guidelines will be given to teachers and made available for students and parents.
“It’s good for the administrators to know, it’s good for teachers, good for students to know, it’s good for parents to know,” Thompson told the Board.
While Thompson hopes that these guidelines will lead to more consistency across schools, he also acknowledges that individuals and circumstances may vary.
“Every situation is different, so there’s going to be some gray areas, but it helps to know why,” he said at the meeting.
“We don’t just want to punish students; we want to understand why it’s happening and to change the root of the behavior.”
This school year will also mark the start of a new disciplinary board, the Central Office Discipline Committee, which will stand between the schools and the School Board’s discipline committee.
“The primary reason that this committee has been developed is because we believe there are some student discipline issues that do not rise to the level of needing to go before the School Board Discipline Committee,” Thompson explained in an interview.
“While nearly all disciplinary matters will still be handled at the school level, there are a few instances that warrant going before the Central Office Discipline Committee. Thankfully, we have even fewer that warrant going before the School Board Discipline Committee.”
Schools themselves are able to suspend a student for up to 10 days before involving the board.
This new committee will, Thompson hopes, lighten the load of the School Board, which has been called on with increasing frequency in the past few years.
“The reality is that we have more kids coming before the disciplinary committee. This isn’t just a Rockbridge problem either, it’s happening all across the nation, all across the commonwealth,” he said.
Vaping, the use of e-cigarettes, is increasingly an issue in schools.
“We have a very serious concern about the uptick in vaping by school-age children in the past few years. This is a critical issue all across our nation and, unfortunately, our community is not immune,” Thompson explained.
“It’s an uphill battle but it’s one we have to fight.”
