The Lubbock Independent School District Board of Trustees received a second reading of local policy cleanup updates (CASB updates 01/24 and 01/25) and a legislative briefing on new statutory requirements that must be implemented in district policy by Sept. 1.

The presentation, led by Misty Reber, chief academic officer, framed updates 01/24 and 01/25 as “cleanup sessions” that align local policy language with existing practice and state law. Reber said the updates revise comma placement, clarify which official may sign for financial designees, update intellectual property ownership, expand employee conduct language to cover nicotine and vaping devices, and align references to the dyslexia handbook and gifted-and-talented language.

Why it matters: several statutory changes from the 80th/89th legislative session require the district to change policy before the start of the school year. The board must adopt or resolve policy changes at public meetings; in some cases the law requires passing a resolution and then a policy in separate actions.

Key items described to trustees

- Cell phones (HB 1481): Reber said the district will follow the new law and already implements a “out of sight, turned off” rule during instructional time (bell to bell). Students receive a warning on a first infraction and phones are confiscated on a second. For elementary and middle school, parents must retrieve confiscated phones; at the high school level students may retrieve phones from the office after school for the first two infractions, with later infractions requiring parent pickup. The district will not impose a fee for return and will not destroy confiscated phones.

- Homeschool participation in UIL (HB 401): District staff said the new state law requires the board to make an annual formal declaration if the district will opt out of allowing homeschooled students to participate in University Interscholastic League activities. The district staff recommended continuing the district’s existing practice of not allowing homeschool students to participate and will bring a resolution and policy for the August meeting. Staff noted a minimal funding impact and operational difficulty monitoring academic eligibility for homeschool students as reasons for the recommendation.

- Libraries and challenged materials (SB 13): Reber provided detailed briefings on the law’s requirements. Key points reported to the board:
• Parents must be able to view library holdings and receive notice (by title, author and genre) when their child checks out a book. The district uses the Destiny platform for on-campus holdings and has enabled parent notification via the district’s SIS; the district has disabled access to OverDrive (an online lending platform) because the vendor cannot meet the notification and parental control requirements at this time. “We use a platform called Destiny, and you can look and see what is available in the library,” Reber said.
• The law allows but does not require a library advisory council. If the board chooses to create one, the council would review acquisitions and challenges, must be composed of volunteer parents of current students and nonvoting staff as the board decides, and would be subject to the Open Meetings rules for public bodies (posted agenda, recorded meetings and posted minutes). Reber warned that the advisory-council process will slow acquisitions because every purchase must be public-posted for 30 days and come to the board for final approval unless the board’s policy permits routine replacements.
• Challenged books must be removed from circulation immediately when a formal challenge is filed; that is a change from prior district practice. Reber said the district communicated the current list of challenged titles to staff and removed those books from shelves and classroom libraries pending final resolution. The law requires the board to hear challenges within 90 days; Reber noted that last year the district had roughly 85–130 items on the challenge list and recommended preparing administrative support for the council to meet the tighter timelines.

Other local-policy cleanups: Reber summarized CDA local (investment vendor standards), DH local (employee standards of conduct including nicotine/vaping language), EHB local (special programs, dyslexia handbook references), and FFG local (child abuse reporting timelines; district already moved from 48-hour to 24-hour oral reporting in practice to match new law and will update policy in October).

Process and next steps: Reber said the three items that must be in place before Sept. 1 (cell-phone policy language, the UIL opt-out resolution/policy, and library-policy changes tied to SB 13) will be brought to the board for formal action at the August meeting. For library policy, the board will first consider a resolution and then the policy at a subsequent meeting, as required by the statute. Staff asked trustees to consider whether to include a policy exception that allows librarians to replace worn copies of already approved titles without full advisory-council and board review.

Discussion vs. action: board discussion during the workshop focused on implementation details (parent email delivery, Destiny accuracy, classroom-library handling). Reber said Destiny has been updated but librarians are still reconciling holdings, especially at consolidated campuses; she asked trustees for patience as staff finish that cleanup. The district turned off OverDrive access pending vendor compliance with notification requirements.

What the transcript shows: these are briefings and second readings; trustees did not adopt final policies in the workshop. Formal actions and resolutions were described as forthcoming at the August board meeting.