County schools to analyze discipline
September 5, 2012
By STEVEN NALLEY
sdnedu@bellsouth.net
The Oktibbeha County School District Board of Directors will consider two changes to districtwide student discipline policies 6 p.m. Thursday at the district’s office.
OCSD Superintendent James Covington said the first policy change would invert the disciplinary measures for the first and second infractions against cell phone usage rules at schools. Currently, he said, teachers respond to the first infraction by taking up the student’s cell phone and giving the student an in-school suspension (ISS), and they respond to the second infraction by calling the student’s parent.
“We’re just going to change the two steps,” Covington said. “First, we’re going to call the parent, and then we’re going to (use) ISS.”
The second policy up for change gives students one unexcused absence for every three times they are tardy, Covington said.
“It’s still in policy, but it’s not in practice,” Covington said. “We’re going to get that (policy) changed.”
Covington said the board is still waiting for proposals before it can continue discussing leases for the Oktibbeha County Lake. As of Wednesday, he said the school district has not received any new proposals.
“At the time we printed the agenda, I had no new knowledge,” Covington said. “That could change by (Thursday), but I don’t have any (new) knowledge as of now.”
Covington said he has not heard any updates on the lake from Mike Ainsworth, OCSD 16th section land manager. On Wednesday, Ainsworth said no new proposals had come into his office, either, and the district’s next steps have yet to be determined.
“We don’t have any (next) steps right now,” Ainsworth said. “(We are just waiting for) whoever wants to come in and submit a proposal.”
The most recent bid on the lake lease, a $25,000-per-year bid from former Mississippi State University basketball coach Rick Stansbury and John Barnett, was rejected by the OCSD board Aug. 7 because the proposal did not meet the lake’s appraised value. A reappraisal in spring 2012, which led the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks to reject its lease on the lake and campgrounds, placed the land’s value at an estimated $40,700 per year, about $100 per acre.
