Cashmere forms a new school-related board

With a new school year comes possible new changes to the school system for not only Cashmere, but the surrounding school districts as well. This year has brought about new ways in which student discipline and student attendance are being handled and corrective actions that accompany these changes.
According to Scott Brown, the Cashmere High School Vice Principal, the biggest change to come to the high school due to this year's new policy changes has been how the school treats truancies.
The high school's procedures for expulsions and correctional actions remains generally the same Brown said.
Depending on the severity of a student's actions or behavior during a class period, Brown stated that the student would likely be taken out of the class and would also serve detention time for about an hour.
"If it's really severe then we'll suspend them for one to ten days," Brown said. "But those haven't changed in the last I don't know how many years here."
The school also works hard to make sure that the student's due process is not violated and that parents can be notified of their child's situation so that the amount of time allowed to make an appeal is established.
"All of that has to be changed in our letter as far as the new letter from the law and whatnot," Brown said. "So all that is in there but we haven't made any wholesale changes to our discipline."
Students who leave school to participate in sports are no longer marked down as excused absences either.
"That is actually a new piece that just came out that we've discussed," Brown said of himself and the school staff. "It used to be that the kids would be marked absent but it was an excused absence if it was a school-related activity, whether it was on campus or off campus. Now, whether it's on campus or off campus and it's a school-related activity we don't count it as an absence for the state. But we still keep a record of that in our system so we know how many times kids are missing this class or that class. That's just basically a state reporting issue and not a major issue."
A major change being introduced to the school district, according to Brown, is the school's new Truancy Board.
"Now every school district has to have a Truancy Board to deal with the first level of court mandated truancy," Brown stated.
Truancy is committed when a student is absent from school without permission and without legitimate cause. Action is sometimes taken when a student misses five school days within a month.
"That's probably the single biggest thing that's happening this year as far as discipline and/or attendances," Brown said.
Prior to this new change, Brown said that students who had five truancies in a month, or ten in a year, were referred to the Chelan County Juvenile Court for Truancy Court.
"The court hears the case and they either court order the student to go to school for the first level or they dismiss the case," Brown said. "If they have a contempt of court, then the court can give the student up to four days in juvenile detention."
The kid(s) in juvenile detention may even be given homework packets or other school-related activities to work on during their time in detention.
The next time around the student could spend up to seven days in juvenile detention if there's another contempt of court issued.
"That's what used to happen," Brown said. "Now they've added in a piece in between when we prepare to file on the student and court. Now they go to the community truancy board rather than go to juvenile court."
According to Brown, the development of Cashmere's truancy board began near the start of last year.
"Wenatchee has had one for a couple of years," Brown said. "So they were kind of used as a bit of a model, but a lot of schools in our area got together and worked to run through some ideas of how to put them (truancy boards) together."
Brown stated that so far the high school has not had any students who have needed to go to a truancy board this school year. They have not had very many cases in the past either.
The truancy board will figure out why the student is missing school and create a contract with the student and the parents to ensure that the student continues going to school.
"The board takes into account what the issues or the 'heartache' for the kid is," Brown said. "Then they will come up with a contract. If the kid violates the contract then they will go to court because at the same time that we send them to the community truancy board, we file at the court. It files at the court but it's a 'stay', a little checkbox that says 'stay'."
This means that the student's file will just sit at the court provided that they follow the guidelines that the truancy board comes up with.
"If they violate the guidelines then we call the court up and say 'This kid is violating our contract'," Brown said. "Then they're going to go to court. So basically they put a step in between court and violations."
It is a huge hope that these truancy boards will help decrease the numbers of truancies that students commit.
"This is kind of a stop gap to help reduce those numbers that are going to court," Brown said. "That's just my guess. It's not bad when you're meeting with a smaller group trying to come up with some ways to help a kid instead of just hammering a kid."