Wausau School Board Discusses Additional Policy Changes

Wausau School District
Wausau School District

WAUSAU, WI (WSAU) -- The Wausau Board of Education may make changes to the Code of Student Conduct and the transfer policy.

The Wausau School District Policy, Resolution, and Legislation committee of the whole will be having additional meetings to change their code of student conduct policy.

Concerns from several people in the district were brought to board member Tricia Zunker about student disruptions in class. Parents were concerned about students being evacuated from classrooms due to a disruption and not being notified of the evacuation, especially at the elementary level.

Discussion on the issue brought up ideas of having a processing room for kids to de-escalate after a conflict or having more mental health professionals in schools. The Board of Education will be including how to address these concerns in the policy, at an upcoming workshop for the districts strategic plan at the direction of Superintendent Keith Hilts.

The board also discussed how they need more time to approve revisions to a policy about assigning students to schools.

At their meeting, the Wausau Board of Education decided to wait another month before taking action on Policy 5120 K-12 Assignment of Students to Schools. The policy deals with students requesting transfers to different schools within the Wausau School District.

Much of the changes being looked at involve the third option for in-district transfers focused on a case-by-case basis. New revisions would direct parents to contact the Director of Pupils for these requests.

Board Member Tricia Zunker brought up concerns about adding examples for special case-by-case transfer situations and having a link to the forms online for easier access. This included wanting to add in language that was removed in 2017 to allow extra forms to be included in the application to flesh out the request.

The Board and staff will work on looking at other transfer policies and language used to clarify the changes proposed for the policy.

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