Rock Hill School Board August 29 Retreat Agenda

The Agenda for the Saturday, August 29, 2009 Rock Hill School Board retreat can be found here
and below:

SCHOOL BOARD RETREAT
LOCATION:	District Office
START: 9:00 a.m.
DATE: August 29, 2009
ITEM#	AGENDA TOPIC	DISCUSSION LEADER
1	Review board opinions captured from last retreat meeting	Dr. Kokolis
2	Review current school enrollment data - F/R lunch	Dr. Kokolis
3	Review of 2003 mediation agreement impact on reassignment policy	Mr. John Reagle, Childs and Halligan
4	Review of draft policy	Dr. Kokolis
5	Board discussion and modifications	Bob Norwood
6	Operations Projects - Bid Approval	Bill Mabry/Mike Armour

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The information below is background for the meeting. The example policy being presented by the administration has not been discussed by the board. The excerpts at the end of the policy are from the district's 2003 memorandum of agreement over an earlier elementary school assignment issue. You should review existing policies JBCC and CBC. If significant changes are made, they most likely will come out of this meeting. You should discuss, or send questions, to a board member in advance of the meeting.
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Policy

Reassignment of Students

Code JCR Issued DRAFT8/09

Purpose: To establish the basic structure to reassign students to schools.

In order to provide equal access to quality educational opportunities for all students, the Board is committed to providing necessary and adequate resources, to include materials, technology, and personnel, to all district schools. School assignments are made to maximize use of school facilities and support diverse populations. Students are assigned to schools within the attendance zone of their residence. The Board believes in the philosophic goal of maintaining balance within the school system, as related to school capacity, the number of students receiving free and/or reduced lunch supplement, student performance on state achievement tests and student proximity to the school. Parents should not expect that their school of initial enrollment will be their child's school for all of the elementary, middle, or high school years, as attendance zones are subject to change. Should reassignment occur, the Board does make a commitment to students and parents to:

• make every reasonable and practical effort to reassign children only once during their elementary school years

• begin the reassignment process in the fall of the year preceding implementation of a new reassignment plan

The superintendent shall prepare an annual report, to review school population in individual schools to include the percentage of students receiving free and/or reduced lunch supplement, state test scores, and student distribution. When a school demonstrates a marked increase or decrease (margin of 15% elementary, 10% middle school, 5% high school) of free/reduced lunch supplement population; or decreased or sustained low state test scores over time; or should a school exceed capacity to the degree of overcrowding; the superintendent will make recommendations for reassignment of students. In addition, the administration will review student distribution data to ensure that no school is in racial isolation, where the school racial population varies from the District's system wide racial average by more than +/ 30% or whose population is 80% or more of any one race, whichever is the smaller percentage difference.

The director of technology will be responsible for updating attendance area maps annually to reflect any changes in boundary maps or shifts in demographics within the map planning segments.

In the event of an emergency, the decision to redistrict a school because of extenuating circumstances will take place, as indicated by the emergency, with immediate action taken.

Attendance areas are available from the Planning Department and can be viewed on the district Web-site at: http://www.rock-hill.k12.sc.us.

Adopted
Legal references:
A. S. C. Code, 1976, as amended:

1.Section 59-19-90(9) - Board can determine school for pupil to attend.

Civil Action - cite case

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excepts from memorandum:

Terms and Conditions
2......."The School District shall not employ numerical racial quotas or targets in the assignment of students in any future SAP, including future high school and middle school SAP's."
3......"the School District shall eliminate all noncontiguous satellite zones based on race, unless the School District cannot alleviate the racial isolation of a given school or schools through the use of reasonably drawn contiguous attendance zones. The term racial isolation as used in this paragraph shall refer to a school whose population varies from the District's systemwide racial average by more than +/-30% or whose population is 80% or more of any one race, whichever is the smaller percentage difference."
5......"the School District agrees that race will not be the predominant factor in the assignment of students to its schools."