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Board approves 2025–26 student handbook; adopts new cell‑phone policy language and regulations move forward
Summary
The ISD 191 board unanimously approved the 2025–26 student handbook and advanced changes to electronic‑use policies and new personal device policy language; staff described updates that include attendance team guidance, revised behavior response levels and added law‑enforcement notification language for serious incidents.
The ISD 191 Board of Education on Aug. 14 unanimously adopted the district’s 2025–26 student handbook and advanced related policy changes and regulations intended to clarify expectations for students, staff and families.
Assistant Superintendent Dr. Chris Belmont presented the handbook and related policy work, saying the district updated handbook content with input from administrators, parents, students and community members. He told the board the handbook serves as a reference to start the school year and noted updates after the 2023 legislative session.
Key content changes described by Belmont include a new student attendance team process and clarifications on tardy versus absence codes (the handbook language clarifies that students are expected to be present in assigned learning spaces “on time and for the full day,” and staff discussed a new internal code for “missed significant instruction” to help school success teams identify patterns). Belmont also said the district updated human growth and development curriculum placement (expanded content at 7th grade rather than fourth/fifth), aligned directory-information language to recent state law changes, modernized dress-code language, and clarified examples of weapons in collaboration with law enforcement.
Belmont said personal electronic communication devices (cell phones and similar devices) were moved out of policy 6.34 (electronic technologies acceptable use) and into a new, separate policy 5.24 that the board reviewed on a first reading. The proposed regulations accompanying policy 5.24 outline roles and responsibilities for students, staff and administrators, include guidance for a compassionate and consistent rollout, and call for surveys and data collection in the early months of implementation to monitor equity and effectiveness.
Board members asked specific questions about attendance coding and the difference between a short tardy and a missed-significant-instruction code; Belmont said the report card will continue to show only tardies and absences to families while building-level teams will use the additional internal code for targeted intervention. Director Ault pressed for clarity about whether one brief late arrival and one extended absence on the same day would be treated as separate marks; Belmont said he would check the attendance team’s exact model and described the district’s approach as capturing data for follow-up rather than altering report-card displays.
On the policy process, Belmont and board members clarified that the current action on policy 6.34 was a first reading; earlier script language had mistakenly said “first and final.” Policy 5.24 was also approved on a first reading; the related regulations for 5.24 were approved on first reading and staff said they would be posted online linked to the policy and operationalized in the first weeks of the school year.
Votes and next steps: The board unanimously approved the student handbook for 2025–26 and approved the policy readings and accompanying regulations to move forward. Staff said they will continue operational work to communicate changes with principals, families and staff and to monitor implementation the first months of the school year.
Ending: Belmont said student-handbook communications and principal calibration across schools are scheduled in the coming weeks to prepare for the Aug. 25 start of the school year.
