CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Educational leaders that met Tuesday at the Capitol Complex in Charleston all agreed they want the best possible climate and culture for students across the state.
It was the inaugural meeting for a stakeholder group formed to review student behavior and the means by which schools address discipline. The group was requested to be formed by Dave Perry, West Virginia Board of Education President.
Perry, Charlene Coburn, the Executive Director of the Office of Leadership & System Support at the West Virginia Department of Education, and Drew McClanahan, the Assistant Director of the Office of Leadership & System Support at WVDE led the discussions of the group made up of 13 individuals.
“The idea is to be able to provide support when needed to counties,” McClanahan said. “To ultimately give them the flexibility or freedom to handle the decisions that are ultimately going to be different from county to county.
“We came here today with the thought and the idea with our schools, our teachers, and our families would be better supported if we were able to provide better flexibility with the policy to allow local boards of education in conjunction with local superintendents, principals, teachers, and local school improvement councils, to come up with way to better implement the policy to make sure students were going to be provided the implementation needed.”
The group discussed possible changes to Policy 4373, “Expected Behavior in Safe and Supportive Schools” prior to next school year. The policy outlines specific behaviors of students and assigns a level of severity from one to four. They will reconvene before any type of proposed change is brought to the WVBE.
“We are going to go through from the recommendations from today,” McClanahan said. “We are going to make sure the wording and verbiage is in line with what the conversation was today. Provide for revision to bring back with this stakeholder group to ultimately approve before we go to the board for board approval. We need to make sure we can get the word right to make sure that each local organization is going to understand the intent behind this.”
Along with discussing changes to Policy 4373, they reviewed and studied the interventions available to schools to ensure adequate supports are in place to benefit students and educators.
Also in the stakeholder group was Will Hosaflook, Superintendent of Wood County Schools, Miller Hall, Vice President of the West Virginia Board of Education, Andy Whisman with the WVDE, Gary Ray of the Fayette County Board of Education, members of the West Virginia Education Association, David Wright and Jimmy McPherson, members of the American Federation of Teachers, Sabrina Rohmiller and Amber Brown, David Gladkosky of West Virginia Professional Educators, and Paul Black of the West Virginia School Service Personnel Association.
The group did not have a firm date on when they would meet again, but noted a goal to present changes in a final plan to the WVBE in January.
“We had individuals identified from all these perspectives because we understand that each of these groups or organizations are going to be impaired for making sure students receive what they need to move forward,” McClanahan said.
“We don’t exist in a vacuum and we want to share responsibility across the board.”