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BELLEFONTE -- During this month's Bellefonte Area School District Board of Directors meeting numerous principals were in attendance to discuss minor changes made to faculty and student handbooks throughout the district.
Dr. Jennifer Brown, Principal of Virtual Learning for the Bellefonte eLearning Academy (BeLA), first spoke about the handbook for BeLA students.
Since BeLA has not had a handbook before this, Brown had much more to talk about than some of the later presenters. This presentation was less of an "update" and more of a presentation on the guidelines. The handbook will be used in addition to the handbook of their building-based school.
The information presented is content that is typical in standard district handbooks and mirrors current district rules, but adapted to better fit virtual learners; clearly laying out responsibilities and expectations for students and families.
One thing that was majorly stressed was the idea that BeLA students are BASD students, and will be entitled to all opportunities that BASD students have, and are permitted to participate in all school district activities.
They also talked about times when BeLA students may be required to be "on-site" versus virtual. For example, during state mandated testing -- Keystone Exams, PSSAs -- students will be required to be either at the BeLA center or their home school so they can be monitored during the tests.
Brown also spoke on one section of the handbook indicating a parent/guardian role with their virtual learner.
"It's okay if your student doesn't get everything. Let us help them," explained Brown, "Productive struggle is super good for kids and it's okay."
The handbook also explained the implications of Artificial Intelligence. AI such as ChatGPT are described as "powerful learning tools" but the handbook indicates that students must be aware that these tools can also be used to cheat and steal others' content. All assignments are run through an anti-cheating software, and if a student is caught plagiarizing there are serious consequences.
Next, some of the elementary schools in the district had minor adjustments made to their handbooks.
Michael Baughmen, Principal of Bellefonte Elementary; Karen Krisch, Principal of Marion-Walker Elementary; Daniel Besch, Principal of Pleasant Gap Elementary and Dan Park, Principal of Benner Elementary, all spoke on some of the minor adjustments made.
These minor adjustments included, but are not limited to: updates to testing dates for the school year, inclusion of terminology that either replaces, removes or updates current policies, additions to school staff listings and sections added relating to BeLA.
The Bellefonte Area Middle School also received an update to their handbook, which was presented by Sommer Garman, Principal of the Middle School and Joseph Eckenroth, Vice Principal.
Much like with the elementary school updates, these additions were rather minor -- updates to daily time schedules, new language regarding equity added and removing pieces that were listed elsewhere in the handbook.
One of the more prominent changes made was regarding the end of the year field trips. Previously, the BAMS handbook stated that a student will not be able to attend the end of the year trip if, six weeks prior to the trip, they received: two or more office detentions, four or more lunch detentions, in school suspension or out of school suspension.
This was removed so that the decision to keep a child from the field trip can be handled on a case-by-case basis, rather than by a blanket statement about behavior; it was deemed unfair that a student can have perfect behavior all year and then be kept from a grade-wide field trip because of one bad choice six weeks before the trip.
Changes to the Bellefonte Area High School handbook were presented by Stephen Caruso and Katrina Lee, Vice Principals of the High School.
These changes included the removal of some of the COVID-19 pandemic terminology that was considered outdated for the 2023-24 school year.
They also removed any information regarding "permanent passes" as they no longer offer those.
Minor changes were made to the Athletic handbooks as well, presented by Athletic Director Deb Moore.
These changes mostly revolved around keeping terminology consistent - specifically for Moore's title which was labeled differently throughout the document. Numerous times she's listed as both Athletic Director and Director of Athletics -- in order to keep the terminology the same, these have been changed to "Athletic Director."
All of the drafted changes to the handbooks can be viewed individually on the district's BoardDocs site for the July 11 school board meeting.
The Bellefonte Area School District Board of Directors will meet again on Aug. 15, 2023 at 7 p.m. at the Bellefonte Area Middle School. There is no virtual option, but you may attend in person and a recording of the meeting will be available on C-Net.