School board passes parental engagement policy

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough School Board passed a a policy at their meeting on March 3 relating to parent engagement in an effort to align the MSBSD Board Policy with existing state statute. Board Policy 6020 implements Alaska Statute 14.03.016 which requires school districts to have policies promoting the involvement of parents in the education program. The parental rights contained in BP 6020 allow for parents or guardians to object or withdraw students from statewide testing, activities, classes and programs, including for a religious holiday, and to review content of an activity or class as well as be notified two weeks before any program provided to students that includes content involving human reproduction or sexual matters, except it would not extend to training provided to students on awareness and prevention of sexual abuse, sexual assault, and dating violence abuse. Immediately as the agenda item came before the school board for discussion, Member Tom Bergey moved to amend BP 6020 to delay the implementation of the board policy for 90 days.

“ We need to give the superintendent and the administration ample time to prepare the district for whatever move this may produce,” said Bergey. “Dr. Trani has already stated that he could have any applicable AR’s produced within 60 days of the passage of board policy prior to them going into implementation. It would be nice if the administration, the AR’s, policies, procedures that are put forth have a chance to go before public review and go before the board before the policy is implemented just to make sure that what the board and what the community envisions is in line with what the superintendent envisions before this actually goes live at the end of the 90 days.”

Bergey’s initial amendment passed, but the board was not finished discussing what was and was not legal procedure for the board to follow regarding implementation. Board Member Ryan Ponder argued that voting on delaying the implementation of what statutes already require was not the correct order. Ponder moved to postpone BP 6020 in January and asked the administration to bring the item back with additional policies attached.

“I feel that the school board is micromanaging the superintendent and I believe that htis is not in the best interest of the school district to spend time on this kind of thing with amendment after amendment that have to do with the implementation of a policy that reflects the law and I would hope that we will move on and not get bogged down into splitting hairs over small definitions,” said Board Member Sarah Welton. “I understand why you might feel and think these things but I believe that we are micromanaging and that is not the role for the school board.”

Bergey then read aloud the policies contained in AS 14.03.160 and argued that the policy must be voted on before it returned in 90 days to be implemented.

“We have to have a policy that includes procedures on how we recognize the authority of a parent to withdraw. What we’re proposing to adopt here is in exercising their roles in education of their students, parents and guardians have the following specific rights, the right to object to and withdraw their student from a standards based assessment required by the state of Alaska,” said Ponder. “By statute it’s irresponsible to adopt the policy that includes the procedures to do this.”

Ponder argued that without specific procedures included, the policy was out of order. Board President Ole Larson noted that in discussions with the school district lawyer Saul Friedman, the order of approving the board policy to allow for Superintendent Trani to bring the policy back to the board was in the correct order.