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Superintendent reviews policy updates on nondiscrimination, attendance, safety and digital accessibility
Summary
Superintendent Mister Mullen presented a package of policy changes to align district rules with state and federal law, covering nondiscrimination address updates, extracurricular eligibility for home-educated students, new truancy thresholds, digital accessibility and school-safety protocol changes ahead of a July 1 adoption deadline.
Superintendent Mister Mullen reviewed a package of policy updates during the Jan. 26 Solon City Board of Education meeting that the administration will bring forward for formal adoption at a subsequent meeting.
Mullen said the updates are mainly to align district policies with recent state and federal law. Changes discussed included an address update and clerical alterations to the district nondiscrimination policy, a revision clarifying that under new state law only home-educated students (not students from other districts under a bullying exception) are eligible for certain extracurricular participation, and a policy change providing greater district flexibility in teacher assignment and transfer decisions.
The superintendent also summarized revisions tied to changes in state truancy law—new absence thresholds and a requirement to notify parents when a student misses 5% of required instructional time—and said the district will transition procedures during the summer to meet a July 1 policy-adoption deadline. Other items included new federal digital-accessibility requirements for websites and apps, consolidation of electronic disaster-recovery language into a continuity-of-operations policy to meet state cybersecurity expectations, and updates to school safety policy that add 988 suicide-hotline information, specify cell-phone use during emergencies and update door-locking guidance.
Mullen noted the district uses Neola, a policy-monitoring service, to track legal changes and recommend policy updates. He also described changes to student-abuse-prevention training required by a law the superintendent named in the meeting as "Aaron's Law," saying the district will work with a third-party training provider or approved curricula to comply.
The board did not take votes on the policies at the Jan. 26 meeting; Mullen said the recommendations would be on a future agenda for adoption after board members have had time to review the drafts.
