Enrollment stats in at school board meeting

PONDERAY — To kick off Tuesday’s Lake Pend Oreille School District board meeting, Superintendent Dr. Becky Meyer told board trustees the district expects to see roughly the same number of students.

Meyer shared the district’s current number of enrolled students for the 2023-’24 school year in a conversation with the board about enrollment.

The district expects to welcome at least 3,800 students in September, 3,716 of whom have already completed the pre-registration process, Meyer said. Last year, the district closed out the school year with 3,799 students.

Due to a new open enrollment law, the school district is seeing some changes in their open enrollment numbers. So far, 183 open enrollment students have been accepted. Forty-four students are pending and no students have been denied. While information on where these students live is yet available, Meyer said many of them are likely from West Bonner County School District.

Board members voted to adopt policy revisions to membership, student and family privacy rights, parental rights, open enrollment, out of state students, suicide, student records, required annual notices, grievance, evaluation of classified staff and sex offenders. The board also voted to add new policies regarding classified employees and display of the national motto.

Restraint and Seclusion was a policy up for discussion during first readings. While Meyer and Board Chair Geraldine Lewis both stressed that it is extremely rare in this district for schools to need to utilize this policy, they also said that new wording still needed to be addressed for legal reasons. The suggested revisions are highly encouraged by the Idaho State Department of Education and reflect House Bill 281, which was signed by Gov. Brad Little on April 3, 2023. These policy changes dive into detail about when, how and why a student can be restrained. New wording also describes what information is required to be recorded in the rare circumstance that restraint and seclusion must take place.

Other policies discussed include visitors to schools, solicitations, armed security officers and student activity funds.