Student Discipline and Mobile Device Use Discussed in Cascade School Board Meeting

On Tuesday, September 17, at 6:00 PM, the Cascade School Board got together for its regular meeting in the conference room of Cascade Public School. Board members, school staff, and community members gathered to discuss several important topics. Twelve new items were addressed during the meeting, including a recommendation for the expulsion of a student and the use of cell phones on campus.

Principal Wilson covered several topics in his report, including promoting the school’s new podcast, titled The Badger Den, which is now available on Spotify. He also gave a presentation on ACT testing for Cascade’s 11th-grade students, discussing their performance and areas for improvement.

Superintendent Levi Collins’ report introduced the new staff emergency procedures manual and the implementation of an application designed to guide responses during in-school emergencies. He noted that a recent incident at the school highlighted the need for more practice with the new equipment. To address this, the school staff plans to run drills, helping them better utilize the software and fostering a more organized response from students and staff should an emergency arise in the future.

The first item of new business was related to the aforementioned incident. The board introduced a motion to consider recommending and potentially taking action on a student expulsion. The general public was asked to leave the conference room while the board discussed the matter, due to “the right to privacy for the individual outweighing the public’s need to know,” in the words of a board member. When the public was allowed back into the room, the motion was passed.

The 10th item discussed was a review of Policy 3630, a model policy for Montana’s public schools, which contains three options regarding making the campus a “cellphone-free” zone. The school currently follows Option 2, which allows “authorization to use mobile devices at school in classrooms with teacher permission and in common areas during non-instruction time in a manner that does not violate the privacy of others.” After some discussion, the motion to update the policy to Option 1 (a general authorization to use mobile devices) failed, and the board chose to continue with Option 2.

I encourage you, dear reader, to read the approved minutes of this board meeting in a later issue of The Cascade Courier, since this is just a quick overview of the events of the board meeting. The next regular school board meeting will take place on October 15th, and as always, it’s open to the public.