Jefferson City Public Schools' Board of Education will be making several significant decisions in the coming months concerning boundary lines, school start times and drug testing for athletes.
JCPS' Chief of Learning Brian Shindorf and Director of Secondary Education Gary Verslues told the board at its Monday night meeting that the plan on drug testing is to eliminate bulk group testing and replace it with randomized individual testing.
Verslues said the current practice of bulk testing can involve up to 600 students at a time, who are given advance notice of the date and time of the testing - too much advance notice, according to some board members.
Verslues said a surprise announcement of bulk testing has not been tried, but the logistics of doing that would be challenging.
Shindorf said the district is looking for a testing program that's effective and manageable.
"We don't want to lose the purpose of why we drug test our students who (do) a MSHSAA activity," Verslues said - to encourage students to make good decisions and be a deterrent to illicit drug use by students, but "the amount of time that the (athletic directors) and their staff commit to facilitating the drug testing under our current format is unheard of."
Verslues also said the collective amount of class time students miss for the testing would be more than cut in half by a switch to randomized testing.
Under the proposed drug testing system, individual students would be selected by the random pick of a random number assigned to them - entered into a pool for each season of an activity sponsored by the Missouri State High School Activities Association that a student is a part of, Verslues said.
Shindorf said the board could possibly vote on the issue at next month's board meeting.
The board also anticipates that at its February meeting it will have a first read of a proposal to change the district's school start times for the 2019-20 school year, and then vote on whether to approve that proposal in March.
JCPS is considering how to better synchronize all of its school start times to have all elementary buildings start at one time and all secondary buildings at another, one hour apart. District officials have said the change would save up to approximately $500,000 annually in bus transportation costs, and might help alleviate some existing busing headaches and new route challenges presented by having to accommodate Capital City High School.
More information from JCPS is available at jcschools.us/Page/16821.
The district has also scheduled two town halls for the community to discuss school start time changes: 6 p.m. Jan. 29 in the cafeteria at Lewis and Clark Middle School; and 5 p.m. Jan. 31 in the cafeteria of Thomas Jefferson Middle School.
The board will also vote at its February meeting on whether to approve its proposed attendance boundary line review policy. The board's policy committee shared the policy at its December meeting.
The proposed boundary line review policy would have JCPS do "a formal review of the geographic attendance areas designated for each school in the district at a minimum of every three years or as deemed necessary by the Board of Education or the superintendent."
"A report will be given to the Board of Education at their June meeting of each school year with the next school year's estimated enrollment data forecast for each attendance area. An enrollment or demographic disparity of more than 9 percent for the middle schools or high schools for two consecutive years will mandate a formal review of attendance areas," according to the proposed policy.
Other business in front of the board Monday night included the approval of contracts related to maintenance projects; building a sewer line connection from Callaway Hills Elementary School to Holts Summit's sewage system; renovations to Adkins Stadium's Weber Locker Building and Press Box; and the purchase of K-12 English curriculum.