GOSHEN — Goshen Community Schools approved a return to Neola as its district policy development company.
Board president Bradd Weddell said he doesn’t remember exactly when the board switched the policy from Neola to Indiana School Boards Association but it was before anyone currently on the board joined, around a decade ago. He suspected that it could have been because the ISBA program is free, but he didn’t know for sure.
District Superintendent Jim DuBois said that other districts in the area are also using Neola and not ISBA, and the board and administration has had ongoing concerns about how up-to-date their policies are.
“Typically when we read our policies, we’ll go check what Neola's given to the other school districts because their policies are there and that’s not good,” DuBois said. “It’s a double-check, it’s digging, it’s research, but it would be better if we could go to our own Neola policy and look at it because sometimes we question, ‘Is that up-to-date?’” “The volume of language that we had to pull out because it didn’t meet code anymore and that’s what draws concern to me,” Weddell said of the ISBA policy the board currently uses. “If we were working on the policies that were originally established by Neola and we found that there was so much verbiage in there that no longer pertained to the law, are they going to try to put it back in?”
Board member Ryan Glick confirmed that the board would still vote on any policy changes after district leadership takes recommendations from Neola and reviews them.
“We would go through the packet of options, we’d selected the options and bring those recommendations to the board and the board would have a chance to look at them, and they have to be voted on by the board before they become our policy,” DuBois said.
He also noted that he would recommend first readings and second readings to ensure the public is also aware of any potential policy changes.
The board voted unanimously to approve a contract with Neola.
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