Board briefed on state rule reducing EOC exam weight to 15% and proposed student conduct policy changes
Jackson Madison County School System Board of Education · December 16, 2025
Summary
Attorney Dale Thomas told the board a Department of Education rule reduces EOC exam weight from 25% to 15% of final grades, prompting recommended updates to policies 4.6 and 4.7; administration also proposed consolidating bus conduct into the general student code of conduct and adding a board-duty ethics section.
The board was briefed on several policy changes the policy committee recommended following recent review and clarification with the comptroller's office.
Attorney Dale Thomas said a Department of Education regulatory change restricts how much the End-of-Course (EOC) test may count toward a student’s final grade. "Under the new regulation, it only allows you to count that up to 15%," Thomas said, and the administration proposed amending board policies 4.6 and 4.7 to match the new maximum. Thomas told the board the change would take effect for the current semester and urged urgency to update board policy at this meeting to match the regulation.
The policy review also included ethics and codes of conduct. Thomas described adding a section to policy 1.106 to enumerate duties of board members consistent with state law and said he corrected the legal citation for the teacher code of ethics in policy 5.6. For policy 5.611 he said the statutory teacher code of ethics language was incorporated directly into district policy. On student conduct, Thomas said the administration recommends removing a separate bus-conduct disciplinary section and applying the general code of conduct to bus riders so that a single set of rules covers classroom, campus and bus behavior.
Board members asked procedural questions about how electronic collection of school funds would work and whether third-party vendors (for example, GoFans) would be affected; Thomas clarified that the proposed change to allow electronic payments applies only to internal school funds collected directly by a school, not to separate school-support organizations or third-party vendor collections.
No final policy votes were recorded in the work-session transcript; Thomas said he would present 2.4 and other proposed language at the next policy committee meeting.
