New Handbook Additions Restrict Teachers' Social Rights
Written by Karl Houtman, Former Student on Thursday, September 24, 2015
With the new school year comes a new set of rules and guidelines for students and teachers to follow. These are outlined by the Snohomish School District Student/Parent Handbook. In the 2015-2016 edition of this handbook, however, there are a few important changes that were made prior to the new school year.
A whole section in the handbook is devoted to “Maintaining Professional Staff and Student Boundaries," which didn't exist before this year. Included on page 65 of this year’s handbook, there are several guidelines, such as “Unacceptable Conduct” and “Appearances of Impropriety." Under these guidelines are scenarios specific to dealings between students and teachers. One situation is under the heading of ‘Personnel’ in the procedure, saying that faculty are not to “disclose personal, sexual, family, employment concerns or other private matters to one or more students.”
The handbook that these procedures were taken from was published on August 26, 2015. Coincidentally, Bill Nicolay, a teacher and advisor for the speech and debate team was suspended for ten days with pay at the beginning of the school year for having inappropriate contact with former and current students a month prior.
Was the change in the district’s policy brought about due to Nicolay’s incident? Some will speculate this, but in reality these changes to the policies have been in the works for the last five years.
The timing for these procedures being put into the handbook seems as if they were brought about by the Nicolay incident, and has resulted in a substantial loss of his credibility and his reputation when in reality these changes have been a long time coming. These procedures should have been toned down and possibly even postponed due to the incident with Nicolay as to not establish a possible connection to him in any way.
I’m sure the district’s intention was to never hurt Nicolay publicly, but they would have been far more in the right had they put off the changes to the district’s policies. These procedures were put into effect after years of debate, but it was horribly timed.
