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Board approves handbooks; student-device policy tightened, district plans phased rollout
Summary
The board approved support-staff, teacher and student handbooks and discussed new personal communication device requirements (PCDs must be powered off/out of sight or stored in lockers); administrators said implementation will be gradual, new laptops will be issued to juniors and seniors, and technical filtering tools will be phased to avoid slowing devices.
The Random Lake School District board moved forward on multiple handbooks and debated a tighter student-device policy that will limit in-class use of personal devices. The board approved the support staff, teacher and student handbooks after clarifying text and policy language; staff said some wording (COBRA, retirement benefits, 'working days' vs. 'business days') will be corrected where transcription issues or inconsistent phrasing were identified.
On student devices, board members asked how personal laptops and iPads used by students as note-taking tools would be handled under the new handbook language. A committee member noted the handbook text requires devices to be stored in lockers during school and asked whether that was the intended practice. A staff member said initial implementation will include communication and coaching rather than immediate enforcement: "On first day of school, we'll probably still have them on the first day... we're not gonna be locking down day 1," the staff member said, adding that staff will work through the changes with families and students.
Administrators told the board juniors and seniors will receive new district-issued touchscreen laptops so most students will have hardware allowing on-device note taking; staff described performance problems with a newer filtering app and said they reverted to an older GoGuardian version because the new app "was using too much of the CPU unit, and it was just dragging down the" machines. The district will test newer tools once hardware can support them and encouraged parents to report filtering or access issues.
Board members raised additional practical questions (locker reliability, dual authentication for college courses and exceptions for students with specific academic needs). Staff said the district will provide key fobs (USB-type tokens) and work with college IT departments to enable required authentication when students take concurrent-enrollment classes.
The board voted to adopt the handbooks and accepted that some language would be clarified by staff before publication. Administrators said the district will collect feedback during the early weeks of school and will revisit problematic items at the September meeting if needed.
