TONASKET – The Tonasket School Board is continuing to review their board policies with the goal of having them all updated by the end of the school year.

“We did the first reading of the 2000 series of policies at the Monday, Sept. 29 board meeting,” said Paul Turner, Superintendent of the Tonasket School District. “We are doing a major reshuffle and we are now reviewing the 3000 series.”

Turner said each board member has taken a section of the policies to review and then makes recommendations to the full board. The district is also contracting with a consultant from the Washington School Directors Association (WASDA) to help with the update and to give advice on whether an obsolete policy should be revised or deleted and whether new policies not now in existence in the districted to be added.

“Most of what they’re doing is getting rid of obsolete policies… some date back to the 80’s and no longer apply to the district or comply with state policies,” Turner said.

The board also heard a report from fellow School Director Lloyd Caton on a recent Legislative Workshop he attended.

“He reported on that and the platform the WASDA is pushing,” said Turner.

During the superintendent’s and principals’ reports Turner said they discussed how the principals and he had been doing walk throughs of the school buildings in an effort to improve their practices about how they look at teachers and evaluations.

“We go in and all observe the same thing and then we go back and talk about what we saw and how we can be consistent in our evaluations,” Turner said.