The next time a parent requests to switch a student from one school to another in Indian Prairie School District 204, the decision can be guided by an updated policy the school board approved Monday night.
Administrators amended the policy on intra-district transfers to align it with the reality of how the district decides if a student can move from school A to school B, Superintendent Adrian Talley said.
Update aligns with transfer decision practices
“Our current policy is not the practices that we actually use, and hence the reason why we needed to make a change,” Talley said. “This new policy is more in line with what we are actually doing in our district, as opposed to what we are not doing.”
For a start, the new policy spells out that parents need to contact a committee in charge of ruling on intra-district transfer requests — not the superintendent — in order to initiate a case for consideration. Talley said the revised policy also standardizes how the intra-district transfer process works for all grade levels, rather than separating high schools from the younger grades.
Policy makes transfers ‘more limited’
School board member Mark Rising said he appreciated the change to make the policy broadly applicable across all ages in the district. Rising also noted that the new policy allows transfers between schools in “more limited” cases, by adding language saying such moves may be approved “under extraordinary circumstances.”
School board member Justin Karubas singled out the policy update for additional discussion during Monday’s meeting. He said he wanted to learn more about why the district proposed the policy update as a “discretionary” item, without the change being prompted by a statewide service that helps school boards keep their policies in line with current law.
Unanimous approval for policy update
After hearing Talley’s explanation, Karubas joined the rest of the board in voting in favor of updating the policy.
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