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Board unveils new workflow to speed routine policy updates and reserve full board time for substantive changes

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Summary

The board’s policy committee proposed a process to handle non-substantive edits via the consent agenda while routing substantive policy changes through standard first/second reads; the change aims to keep the board current on 230 district policies without spending full meeting time on punctuation or cross-reference updates.

The Los Alamos Public Schools board’s policy committee described a new workflow to speed routine, non-substantive policy updates and reserve full board meeting time for substantive policy changes.

Assistant Superintendent Carter Payne and committee members Vice President Wyman and Member Spector explained that the district maintains roughly 230 policies and that an annual review schedule was impractical. The committee proposed a steady review schedule (a multi-year cycle) through which non-substantive edits — such as updated agency names, formatting, punctuation or consolidating duplicate policies — would be processed by the committee and placed on the consent agenda for board approval.

Substantive changes — those that alter district direction, add new regulatory responsibilities or respond to legislative or legal changes — would continue to follow the established process of committee review, a first read and a second read with full board discussion. The committee will include change-tracking and a clear definition of “substantive” vs. “non-substantive” edits, and board members retain the right to remove any consent-item policy for fuller discussion if they believe a change requires more scrutiny.

Committee members said the new approach will document review dates, reduce meeting time spent on minor edits and make the policy repository easier for the public to navigate. The board discussed posting the review schedule publicly so residents can see which policies were reviewed and when.