By By BETTY MITCHELL GRAY
Staff Writer
Beaufort County school leaders were taking steps Tuesday to comply with a state-mandated prohibition against discrimination, harassment and bullying after failing to resolved the issue Monday night.
Members of the Beaufort County Board of Education were polled by telephone Tuesday morning to see if they could reach a consensus on the new policy and, if not, were prepared to meet in a special session before the school’s Christmas break to meet a Dec. 31 deadline on adopting the policy, Sarah Hodges, the school’s public information officer said in an interview Tuesday.
The board has scheduled a called meeting for 8:30 a.m. Friday, according to a document provided to the Daily News on Tuesday afternoon.
The policy under discussion expands the definition of bullying or harassing behavior to include, but is not limited to, “acts reasonably perceived as being motivated by any actual or perceived differentiating characteristic, such as race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, socioeconomic status, academic status, gender identity, physical appearance, sexual orientation, or mental, physical, developmental, or sensory disability or by association with a person who has or is perceived to have one or more of these characteristics.”
A similar change under review by the board includes a similar definition of discrimination.
The new policy also allows complaints of harassment to be submitted anonymously.
The new definition of bullying or harassment was enacted earlier this year by the state Legislature as part of the School Violence Prevention Act, which requires each local school system to adopt specific language as part of its policy prohibiting bullying or harassing behavior. The law sets a Dec. 31 deadline for schools to enact the changes and requires school systems to train by March 1, 2010, their employees and volunteers who have “significant contact with students” in the policy.
The new definition of discrimination was proposed by school officials to coincide with the definition of bullying and harassment.
Although the board gave tentative approval to the policy during its November meeting, some members Monday night had reservations about the definition of discrimination included in the policy draft.
Board member Mike Isbell said he is concerned about a sentence in the existing policy that reads “Discrimination may be intentional or unintentional.” A motion by Isbell to remove that sentence from the policy died for lack of a second.
“It could be twisted and misused by someone with an agenda,” he said.
Board member Cindy Winstead questioned whether a student who expresses concern about undressing in the locker room in front of a fellow student who is a homosexual would, under the definition, be guilty of discrimination.
The board unanimously voted to table action on the new policy and reconsider the changes at its January meeting after consulting with its lawyers, action that would have caused the board to miss the deadline.
In an interview after the meeting, board Chairman Robert Belcher said he was not aware of the deadline, adding that school officials would determine whether the board’s failure to adopt the new policy by the deadline would create a problem for the schools.
“If it is a problem, we will reconvene,” he said.
In other business, the board:
• Re-elected by acclamation Belcher as chairman of the board and re-elected F. Mac Hodges as vice-chairman in a 6-2 vote over William S. Warren;
• Unanimously approved changes in the Retention, Career Status and Nonrenewal Policy that gives new rights to teachers during their probationary periods. Under the change, if a teacher is eligible for “career status” and the superintendent recommends that career status not be given, the teacher has the right to a hearing before the school board unless the recommendation was made because of a decrease in the number of staff positions for a specified reasons. The board may grant a hearing for a probationary teacher not in the final year before that teacher is eligible for career status, under the new policy. It also requires the superintendent to notify the probationary teacher no later than May 15 of the intent to recommend nonrenewal of the teacher’s contract.
• Unanimously approved a change that now encourages students who take advanced placement courses to take the corresponding advanced placement exam rather than requiring them to do so. The board also agreed to reconsider in January the policy that stipulates the school system will pay for students to take those exams;
• Set its next regular meeting for Jan. 25.
All board members attended the meeting, however Hodges and Warren left early because of a scheduling conflict.