With recent debates over the harsh FCPS discipline policies, the school board has taken action to respond to these arguments by creating a discipline committee. The committee would be made up of several community members, including teachers and students.

Mount Vernon district member Dan Storck’s amendment stated that the discipline committee’s purpose would be, “to recommend changes to the School Board by March 2013 that would simplify the language and substantially reduce the size of SR&R and ensure consistency with our community’s values, School Board policies, and Virginia laws.”

“I supported creation of the committee to take a longer, deeper look at our discipline policy, as well as ways to make the SR&R more understandable to students and parents,” Evans said. “At the same time, I did not believe we needed to wait to vote on the amendments that were before us in June on parent notification and other issues. We had had ample time to consider them, in my view. However, a majority of the Board agreed to postpone consideration of those amendments until the discipline committee had taken a look at them and reported back to us in March.”

The board has also been proposing amendments that would change discipline policies in the SR&R, such as changing the language of different sections to make them more clear to students and parents.

“The discipline committee is going to review our SR&R and give recommendations on discipline policy,” Mason district member Sandy Evans said. “At our June meeting, we had several proposals for changes, including my amendment to strengthen parent notification requirements when a student gets into serious trouble.”

Evans hopes to see more community involvement on the committee, such as students, parents and organizations that have studied this issue. She proposed an amendment that would add groups such as the NAACP and the Fairfax Zero Tolerance Reform to the committee. The amendment will be voted on tomorrow at the september 20 meeting. Evans also supports the addition of school board member appointees from the community to the committee.

“Students should be an important part of this discussion, as well, including students who have faced serious disciplinary actions and can tell us what they learned from the process,” Evans said. “I want to see this effort truly bring together parents, students, teachers, administrators, organizations and experts in discipline issues to work through the best approach to ensuring safe schools as well as clear, fair, effective and compassionate discipline practices.”

The board voted to postpone voting on the committee until the Sept. 20 meeting so that the board membership could be further discussed at the Sept. 10 work session.