The Second Meeting on the Student Handbook

This meeting was pretty low key. We continued going through the handbook -- but most of the issues with it were in the first half, which we had discussed (to death?) in the last meeting. Much of the second half was straight out of the Indiana school law, so no amount of discussion was going to change that!
We had a conversation about how to define "modest clothing" -- I think it ended up going nowhere, though. I don't recall any specific verbiage being changed.
There was a highlight of the meeting as we drew to the end: the school administration was going to collect input from the student government association, as well as any student who wanted to comment, so students will have a voice in this as well. Now, whether that voice will make an impact on the final version is yet to be seen, but at least they will be heard.
One interesting thing occured, though: Before the meeting I sent the participants a copy of the cell-phone policy we had worked on in my EdTec class earlier in the semester, because I thought it would be of interest to everyone. When we got to that point in our discussion, one member of the group proceeded to send text messages while we were talking to prove it could be done without anyone being aware that someone had a cell phone. So, the students will have to continue to keep cell phones in lockers because everyone seems to think they aren't responsible enough to have cell phones on their person without using them. I wonder, now, if every student who wanted to keep a cell phone on his/her person would sign an agreement to not use the cell phone during class time, if said students would violate that agreement. I keep believing high school students CAN be responsible -- but maybe I live in an idealistic world.
So, my two-week experience in re-writing a student handbook left me feeling that there is little a parent can do to change the way a school treats its students unless you were to undertake a full examination of the philosophical underpinnings of said school -- and that wasn't going to happen in this situation (although I did suggest it!). And, I suspect that wouldn't happen without something else occurring to instigate a feeling of need.
On a related subject -- a co-worker has spent the last year in India volunteering at a rural school, and one of his recent posts sounded a lot like NCLB complaints: here's the link http://www.amarkumar.net/ (March 5 post). I thought you might like to read it!