The Eastern Pulaski School Corporation can now be a bit more selective, when it comes to accepting transfer students. After discussing the issue in July, the school board finalized an updated transfer policy last week.
Superintendent Dan Foster says a change in state law means that schools may now restrict transfers, based on students’ location or attendance record. “That has been an issue, I know, in our school and I’m sure some of the other local schools, where attendance has been an issue, but by state law, if you take one transfer student, you take them all,” he explains. “So you could have a student come into the second semester, and they’ve already missed 23 days at a neighboring school and they’re behind on credits and now you have to take them. So the law tightened that up a little bit for us.”
Last week, the Eastern Pulaski School Board also adopted a federally-mandated lunch account policy. “It’s not a credit account. It’s a cash account,” Foster says. “And so we had to have a policy in place to state that we will allow people to go to a maximum not to exceed five dollars in the hole, and if that continues, then we have to give them the alternate meal and go down that route.” He says the five-dollar limit is comparable to what other local schools are implementing.
Additionally, the school board updated the corporation’s policy for distributing Teacher Appreciation Grants. Foster says the share of the grant for each highly-effective-rated teacher will be 25 percent more than for teachers rated “effective,” the minimum difference allowed under state law.
