001And God, you can go, buddy. All right. Good evening. My name is Scott Payne. I'm the assistant superintendent for curriculum here in West Babylon. I have the pleasure tonight of talking a little bit about of our code of conduct and some of the proposed revisions that are being suggested, as well as uh in this particular case, feedback that we may be getting from everyone, both the community and and stakeholders in the district. So, tonight I'm going to give you a little presentation on some of the meetings that we've already had, some of the proposed revisions that we are potentially making, and go through a little bit of the timeline and how this process works. So, with that, I'm going to put up on the screen right now a presentation. And this is important cuz you're
002going to see this a few times. This is my email address here at West Babylon. And the reason why that's important, and my phone number as well, is because tonight, since this is a YouTube presentation, any of the feedback you give, I would like you to send an email, and I'm going to talk about this a couple times. And you can you'll have several weeks to do this. So, if you're watching this even while it's recorded on the website, you'll be able to send feedback as well. Or you can call my number and get me, and we can talk about it as well. But we do want feedback from the community, and we want to eventually present to the Board of Ed. So, here's the timeline like I spoke about. We've already had some district
003stakeholder meetings with teachers, you'll see in a minute, with administrators, with parents, and with students. Today, May 14th, we're doing a public feedback meeting where I'm presenting to you some of these suggestions, and my email is right here in front of me as you probably saw on the screen before. I have a computer in front of me. So, any emails you send me, and just a moment I'll show you how to do that, I will get as we speak. May 14th to the 28th, this presentation will be posted to the website, and people will be able to watch it and or continue to give feedback to my email address, which again I'll explain in a few minutes how to do that. And June 9th is where we actually do a Board of Ed presentation. And
004again, via email, anyone can give feedback at any time, and the Board of Ed will eventually adopt the code of conduct as a policy. So, here's that district stakeholder committee I was telling you. These are the people that were on it, and who they are, and what they how they represented the West Babylon community. Again, here's the piece. I know I keep saying this, right? But you can email me at [email protected], and if you could, please put 2627 code of conduct in the subject line so that I don't miss it um and then I can make sure that I get your feedback and I can 100% guarantee you that your feedback will be uh processed um and and part of the conversation that we have with the stakeholders and then eventually um with the Board
005of Ed it probably it may make its way there as well. Um so that entire process all of that feedback will be taking uh until May 28th. All right, here's a little bit about the code of conduct for those of you that don't know. It can be found in our district website under the Board of Ed section. Uh board docs is what we use for all of our policies and our Board of Education meeting minutes and agendas. Um and it's under active policy. It's called policy 5300 code of conduct. Um cod- character and support and it's about 43 pages and it consists of 22 sections. So, what are those sections? They're Roman numerals. Uh for those of you that don't know your Roman numerals, don't worry about it. You can kind of go through here.
006Here's 1 through 12. These are the different sections and tonight when I go over some of the revisions I'm going to give you the section of what the proposed revision is and maybe even at sometimes a number or letter which will tell you the section or the paragraph um or the sentence that it's in. Uh >> [snorts] >> here are the other uh from 13 to 22. And again, these are the general sections of the code of uh of the code of conduct in general and what construes the entire 40 foot somewhat pages um which is at times tough to go through. Uh so like I said before, this committee met together. Um we made revisions which I'm going to present uh tonight to the community. Um minor grammatical pieces and I want to be
007clear about this. Anything that that punctuation or formatting um that were made but were not entirely uh maybe reviewed or approved by the group but did not change the construct of the code of conduct were and could be made. So, if something was capitalized that wasn't supposed to be, um those changes were made at the group and even on on other levels, but they wouldn't be presented tonight because they wouldn't change the construct or the meaning of the code of conduct. Any proposed revision that I give tonight, and I'll explain them as well, um are things that would have changed with the code of conduct representative. And of course, this concept of getting uh feedback from all of you is an important piece via email. Okay. So, let's go through this. Just checking my email
008to make sure I don't have any feedback. Um remember I told you the code of conduct consisted of 20 some odd sections. This is section two, Roman numeral two, definitions. We did make a change here. There's a sentence in here that talks about school functions and about where they may take place. And uh in this particular uh part of the code of conduct, uh it was listed in another state, but we do now, and this is a great thing, we give field trips that sometimes could take place out of country. So, we decided to make the dramatic change of changing state, which is crossed out in red, um cuz that's being proposed removed, and changing it with location, which is highlighted in blue and bold. So, anytime it's crossed out in red, it's something that's
009going to be removed, and anything that's highlighted in blue and bold is going to be suggested. Another change we completely added, and this is in blue and bold, uh under section two in definitions, uh several times throughout the entire code of conduct, school staff is mentioned, and that talks about district personnel. Um so, we said district personnel, school employee, or any other personnel um that might not have otherwise been mentioned. So, could be anything from um any personnel in a building or even a volunteer, or someone participating as a as a representation of the school district. That's what's meant as school staff. Section three, students' rights and responsibilities. We took out this section of work to develop strategies to control their anger. So, it's a long list of things, if you look at the code
010of conduct or if you have it up right now, um one of the student responsibilities and expectation was that students will work to develop strategies to control their anger. Um it was just felt as kind of being redundant or one of those pieces that it it's generally accepted that of course all people will work to develop strategies to develop their anger. Um under section four essential partners, uh you can see in blue we added um ensure that uh parents ensure that children here in New York State and Suffolk County motor vehicle laws on and off the property. Obviously this applies to the high school where students are driving. Um you know, but it but it may apply in some other situations as well which we'll talk about uh further on and maybe e-bikes and things
011like that. Um but the addition to this is just New York State and Suffolk County um and the idea that this would be a safety piece on and off of school property. Section six prohibited student contact uh conduct. Um what we did there is we took out examples of insubordinate conduct um are included but not limited to. We changed skipping detention or in-school suspensions. We took that out. And we put um in uh examples of insubordinate behavior are included but not limited to failing to attend detention or in-school suspension. And the fact that if they do miss it, if students miss that, the absence must be made up at the principal's discretion. Um so there are times where uh students miss maybe an in-school suspension or detention. Um it is the building principal's now as
012per this policy suggestion who will decide whether it needs to be made up or not. Section six again student contact um disruptive conduct. Um we added in there under this concept of using cell phones, headphones, smart watches, all these electronic devices. Um it was recommended that we put um with some of the new New York State education and in the New York State laws under the provisions of the New York State education law. So um some of this uh cell phone free or distraction free school zones. Um the policy is of course recognizing all of those aspects of the New York State education law. Again section six prohibited student conduct uh pulling out students or parents may not bring um and just changing it to bringing. This was kind of a grammatical piece, but we
013thought it was enough of a change where we wanted to make sure that everyone saw that we're changing that they don't bring to that they do bring. Now, it's not to suggest that balloons can ever be brought, of course, because with administrative approval, you can. But, for a variety of reasons, allergies, latex allergies, distraction, a bunch of things, just bringing balloons is something that we had put in there. This is an easy one, section six. We're taking out that word health. It was implied, you know, when you're talking about the safety, physical, emotional well-being, or welfare of others, health kind of fits right in there. So, we felt like we didn't need it. And then given that change, specifically under prohibited student contact, again, we're putting in here the use of skateboards, hoverboards, scooters, e-bikes,
014or similar items with wheels is prohibited inside any school. And we added or on and off school property in accordance with New York State and Suffolk County laws. Similar to that motor vehicle piece like I talked to you earlier about. The thought was here, e-bikes are are really kind of pushing the edge on motor vehicle and bicycle. So, we kind of said, let's make sure that in the code of conduct, we follow everyone follows New York State and Suffolk County laws as it applies to e-bikes. Same concept in the section, but a different category H, misconduct, disrupting educational process. Not a big change here. Cyberbullying instead of the use of electronic text, we we extended it to any electronic communication. Not a not a big change here. And similarly, when it comes to um in
015this case, pornographic pictures, we felt we crossed out pornographic pictures of students or school personnel. There was a bit of redundancy there. It just shouldn't be done, period. And this concept of adding or create with the idea of AI, and the idea that people can uh use artificial intelligence to create pictures that never existed before, um we wanted to include that concept here. These are some minor changes that actually have some some big implications. Um section 20, um discipline eligibility, and this is for students participating in extracurricular activities. Um a suspension, right? All of this was in there already. Um an originally um was the first suspension, in or out of school, may result in a student's non-participation. The committee changed that to will. So, if you see the crossed out may, uh red with
016a strike through, it is replaced with will. So, this will happen. Um any suspension that a student, or um in this particular case, student athlete, student club member, um will not participate in extracurricular activities for the duration of whatever that suspension is. Under the same category, number two, there's a provision in there, there was, the second suspension, uh in or out of school, result in a student's non-participation. Um and again, the word will there was already there, but that's similar to that first bullet that we changed. But, the thing we changed here, um for a period of up to 2 weeks commencing with the date of suspension. So, um the idea here that the building principal and the building itself would have the ability to create that um that a disruption, or what or in
017this particular case, the student's inability to participate in that co-curricular activity for up to 2 weeks, as opposed to 2 weeks. And number three, very similar fashion, up to the remainder of the semester. Previous this, it was just the remainder of that semester. So, not significant changes on two and three, it just gives that up to. Um but, the first one used to be a may, and now it's a will. And our last change in section um this I think this is supposed to be uh 22, not 12. It's up there. Um it used to list that students must be in school by the conclusion of period four um to be able to participate in extracurricular activities for that day. Um the committee decided to change it to a minimum of five full periods, which
018theoretically is the same amount of time, but the thought was if a student had to miss something at a different period in the day, potentially the fact that they're there for five periods, they should still be allowed to participate in extracurricular activities. So, I am going to stop there and for just a second. Um, that is our entire presentation and all of our revisions. Um, I'm going to wait a few minutes. We can put the camera back on. Um, and I'm checking my email. We're back online. For those of you that are watching, you can verify that of course I have my laptop here. And any feedback that you have and I'll wait a minute or two. I'll check my email and I'll read it back to the community and to the group that's listening.
019Now, if you're watching this that's pre-recorded, here's your nice piece. Pretend you're live because you can still email me. I will still get it and I will still respond to you and make sure that your feedback is heard. So, I'll give it one or two refreshes to make sure that I get everyone. At this point I have not. Okay. And we'll give one more shot here in a second. But other than that, I do thank everyone for participating. We have several people that are watching virtually and more importantly, I think the nice piece is we do have the ability of course to post this to the website. So, people may be watching this over the next two weeks and we still want your feedback as well. All right. We are good. Tonight, thank you all
020for attending this and I look forward to