Taylor Connard

Education 650

Standard Activity 9.37A

For this assignment, I was provided with the handbook of every policy that exists for

Clay County High School. This handbook is massive and provides a policy for things such as

building maintenance all the way to negotiations. This was a huge undertaking, but I picked out

the policies that I felt related to operations the most. This handbook dates back to 1976 and some

of the policies are definitely that outdated. These policies were not numbered and they had no

record of them being numbered.

The first policy I want to address is the School Building Administration policy. This

policy states the responsibilities of the principal. I think this policy is extremely important for the

daily operations of the school. If the principal is not performing their duties, the school cannot

operate. The policy states, “The principal shall be responsible for the organization,

administration, and the supervision of his/her school, and in turn he/she shall be responsible to

the superintendent….The principal is the educational leader of his school. He/she should be alert

to opportunities to improve the instructional program…” Our current principal does live up to

majority of this policy. It is easy for us to critique what does or does not happen, but for the main

parts of the policy, she does meet. I do think that our instructional programs could be improved.

We need more course offerings to better serve our students.

The second policy to look at is the Student Code of Conduct Policy. This policy is 15

pages and details every aspect of the responsibility of students in school. This policy is important

to discuss due to the difference in punishment if a student violates the code. We have three

administrators at the high school and they all seem to do discipline a different way. For example,
17.1.2 states the guidelines for responding to a Level 1 Student Violation such as Technology

Abuse. The responses to this violation all include some form of punishment, but there is no

consistency from administrator to administrator on what that punishment will be. If we are going

to have a policy, we need to enforce it consistently.

It can be extremely hard to find any information for Clay County Schools. The school

system still operates mostly on paper and that can be a challenge to obtain. The policies that I

listed above are two that I feel as important for operations. In order to operate smoothly you must

have a principal that is performing their duties accordingly. Operations also run smoother when

conduct violations are punished consistently. My recommendation is that the school

administrators come to a solid agreement on how to punish certain violations. These violations

should all be punished the same to increase consistency.