Medford policy committee sends anti-discrimination policy to full board
A new policy specifically prohibiting discrimination based on sex in the Medford school district will go to the full school board for approval on September 23.
On Monday, members of the district’s policy committee approved the second reading of a policy regarding federal Title IX.
According to district administrator Laura Lundy, much of what is in the new policy was already included elsewhere in the district’s policies, but under changes in federal rules they are required to have them under a specific Chapter IX policy. “We had a lot of this within our policy,” she said.
The bulk of the new policy details procedures on how complaints must be handled along with specifically naming someone to be the Title IX coordinator and who will deal with investigation and enforcements if complaints are filed.
The other change versus pre-exiting policies that banned discrimination based on sex was including specific language that prohibits discrimination based on pregnancy.
Faced with a requirement to have the new policy in place, the Medford School Area Public School District (MAPSD) got a sample policy from the Wisconsin Association of School Boards and altered it to include the information related to MAPSD and last month sent it to be reviewed by the district’s attorney.
At Monday’s special policy meeting, committee members reviewed the changes proposed by the attorney and voted to approve the policy as presented with the changes in place. The majority of these changes were grammatical or dealt with eliminating footnotes that were left from the model ordinances.
Committee member Aemus Balsis questioned the guidelines for the report filed by the investigator which encourages the individual to include their opinion about the validity of those interviewed.
“The facts should speak for themselves,” said Balsis, who is a detective with the sheriff’s department. He noted that in his reports he was trained to not include opinions. “In my world that is the court’s job and the jury’s job,” he said when it comes to opinions.
Committee member Corey Dassow, who is chief deputy for the sheriff’s department, supported keeping in the observations of the investigators, but that the emphasis should be on the facts.
“Opinion is not going to do away with facts,” Dassow said.
With the approval of the policy by the committee, it goes to the full school board for final action. Policies go through multiple steps before they are approved with two readings at the committee level and two readings at the board level.
