At the August 2011 Lone Dell Open House for the 2011-2012
school year, 6th grade parents were told that the school was no longer going to print
student handbooks and that parents could download them from the district
website. So, that evening I downloaded the student
handbook for Lone Dell Elementary and found that it was for the 2009-2010 school year. I tried to find a newer version but it was the only one on the website. So,
I started checking the other elementary school student handbooks and found out
of 11 elementary student handbooks that only 2 of them contained current
information or were dated for the current school year. So, I downloaded all of the student handbooks
and on August 17, 2011, I emailed a copy of them to Ruth Ann Newman the board
president at the time and to John Laughlin my neighbor who had been newly elected as a board member that spring. I explained in my email
that I had to email them copies of the student handbooks because I could not
email them a direct link to the student handbooks because hyperlinks are
generated dynamically for documents on the district website. Which by the ways is quite
annoying. I also included an example hyperlink that worked on my computer in my email so that they would be able to see that it would not work when they tried to use the link. The dynamic hyperlinks are generated for each individual session that you create when connecting to the web server. Even on your own PC, you cannot use the same hyperlink between two different browsers because each browser creates a separate session on the server. However, I had already mentioned the hyperlink issue to the school board before at the April 2011 board meeting and asked them to change this
but nothing became of it. I should
include a copy of the email that I sent as it was a nice email explaining what
I found and asking our board members to review the information and pass on to
the appropriate district personnel so the district could update the website as
required by Missouri state statute 162.08:
Section
162.208
Internet
websites, required postings.
162.208. If any public school district hosts a
district-sponsored Internet web site, that district shall post the following on
such site:
(1) A current version of that district's policy manual and all related documents; and
(2) A current version of that district's handbook, or, if the district has more than one handbook, a current version of all of that district's handbooks.
Ruth
Ann Newman did respond back to me that morning letting me know that she
forwarded my message on to the Central Office.
I did not receive any emails from the central office regarding the student
handbook issues. But, I did notice that
by the end of the week that most of the student handbooks had been
updated on the district website. So, when I spoke at the August
30, 2011 board meeting. The first thing
I did was thank the school board and the school district for updating the
student handbooks because I had been told by Ms. Newman that I never compliment
the school board on what a great job they do. However, the way I was told that
I never compliment the board was not pointed out to me in quite that friendly of
a manner. But, I was happy to see that the school district did update the handbooks.