Mansfield School Committee Creates New Subcommittee

The Mansfield school committee voted 4-0 on Tuesday to create a special subcommittee to go over and update the district’s policy handbook.

School committee members nominated Kiera O’Neil and Jim Perry to head the subcommittee, which will be formed later of other individuals.

“We do have some policies that are outdated because of changes in the Massachusetts General Laws,” Chair Michael Trowbridge said. “I know there are at least six policies that need to be changed.”

The last time the policy handbook was updated the school committee itself went through the entire book and essentially rewrote the handbook.

O’Neil said that many other school committees across the state have a subcommittee to deal with keeping the district handbook up to date.

“It was like 89 percent  [of school districts] had a policy sub committee who were constantly looking at it,” O’Neil said.

The advantage of this subcommittee is that it would allow the school committee to focus on more pressing issues, such as the NEASC accreditation process for the High School and the fiscal year 2013 budget.  Instead of scrambling in the spring to update and rewrite the handbook, a committee would be taking care of it slowly and gradually, not only to alleviate the burden of work on the committee but also allow for policy changes, which come up at many different times during the year, to be made without much of a jumble.