The Newton County School District plans to discuss revising its electronic device policy to see if it needs to be extended to cover smartwatches.
At its regular board meeting on Dec. 10, the school board approved a number of policies, including one that covers all smartphones and other electronic devices. However, it came to light that policy doesn’t have anything to cover smartwatches, which Newton County Middle and High School Principal Shane Phillips said is becoming more common.
“Students can now take a photo of a test with their smartwatch and send it to someone else,” Phillips said. “It’s becoming more and more of a problem, and it may be something we need to look at moving forward, especially after Christmas when Santa Claus may be bringing smartwatches to more students.”
School Superintendent J.O. Amis said any policy revisions wouldn’t take place until the new school year, but the school district would like to review its current policy at its January meeting.
“We aren’t going to change policies for something like that mid-year,” Amis said. “If we do revise the policy, it wouldn’t take effect until the next school year. It would be too confusing to do it in the middle of the year.”
In other business, the board heard from a representative that would look at improvements to the county’s energy usage. Most of the proposed changes in the report revolved around replacing current fluorescent fixtures with LED lighting.
However, the district is currently starting to replace old fluorescent ballasts with LED lighting as the old fixtures wear out.
The company also looked at other costs that would install solar energy cells on the school campuses to help offset energy costs and possibly sell that back to Mississippi Power. Up front costs to the district would be at least $938,000 to start it at the middle and high school campus, but another company recently proposed installing the solar cells at no charge. The only expense would be factored into what the district would save in energy costs, and the other company would maintain the solar cells if they were defective.
The board took the proposal under advisement, but no action was taken.
The board also approved an $8 per acre bid on 640 acres of 16th section property by Kenneth D. Hagin, who currently has the lease on the property.
Donations of $460 and $5,747 to baseball, $1,630 to soccer, $2,030 to tennis and $4,218 to the Blue Stars were approved.
Items on the consent were also approved, including two hires and transfers.
The next school board meeting will be Jan. 14, 2019.
