Rights & Responsibilities

A waypoint is a physical reference used in navigation that marks routes for others to travel. In our lives we have used waypoints to get to the intended destination (e.g. “when you get to the red barn turn right”). Waypoints: The Cultural Path to Conduct, Civility, and Respect provides both rights and responsibilities as well as a policy-based code of conduct for School District 49 that goes beyond a listing of “do’s and don’ts” to shape a district-wide culture of civility and respect.

As a public school system, School District 49 is committed to preserving the rights of students to free and appropriate public education and further recognizes that

rights also come with responsibilities. In support of the latter goal, School District 49 recognizes that the rights of students, including rights to free expression, freedom of religion, and other civil liberties may be appropriately limited because the school is a special institution. For example, the school may place reasonable time, manner and place restrictions on the right of free expression to protect the unique educational mission of the school. If any student feels that their personal safety, civil liberties, or other rights are being violated, that student should immediately report the alleged violation to a teacher, administrator, or school resource officer. Students should not respond to personal violence by escalating the conflict, but should leave the location of the conflict immediately and report to a responsible adult.

Students, parents, guardians, caregivers, administrators, faculty, and staff should strive to know and follow the guidelines in Waypoints: The Cultural Path to Conduct, Civility, and Respect to ensure that their right to education and the educational rights of other students are respected and protected. If anyone encounters behaviors that do not honor this document, please contact your school’s administrator or zone superintendent.

School District 49 spans 133 square miles of urban and rural areas in Colorado, covering northeast Colorado Springs and the Falcon area of El Paso County.

As the fastest growing school district in the Pikes Peak region, we currently serve over 25,000 students within our robust portfolio of schools.

Our vision is to be the best choice in public education. We envision a future when every time a student, parent, or educator chooses a school district, we are the Best Choice they can make. We have a mission to Learn,

Work, and Lead. Our commitment is to be the best choice to learn, to work, and to lead. Every day, we create environments so that everyone associated with the district is always learning, working, and leading us to be the best.

~ Peter Hilts, Superintendent

District 49’s board-approved strategic plan provides unified vision, goals and strategies to prepare students to achieve like never before. The strategic plan is organized around a big rocks metaphor, which comes from the work of Stephen Covey.

Covey illustrated that if you fill your life with the small things, trivial things, then you might not have room for what's really important, what he called the big rocks. But if you first fill your life with what's most important – the big rocks – and add other things around them, the medium-sized rocks, and finally work in the pebbles, everything better fits together.

We have applied this metaphor in our strategic plan, which identifies the district's Big Rocks. These strategic initiatives represent the district’s commitment to community.

We use these six rocks as the foundation for building an excellent future with our staff, students and greater community.

Launch Successful Students

We launch successful students into careers, college, service, and leadership. Whether they join the workforce, head to college, serve our country or start a family, we prepare D49 graduates to succeed as they serve and lead our community.

Build Firm Foundations

The district builds firm foundations for all learning and support. For our students, that means emphasizing foundational skills like literacy, math, critical thinking and creativity. For our workforce, firm foundations means great on-boarding, thorough training, and providing the right tools to do the jobs.

Offer Exceptional Choices

We promote educational choices in our zones, our family of schools, and all our programs so parents and students can select high-performing options to personalize learning and achievement.

Engage Our Community

We engage our community in holding the district accountable for school performance, projects, and outreach to serve students and families across the region.

Sustain Enduring Trust

We sustain enduring trust through practices that are transparent, communications that are clear, and decisions that preserve the good faith of our community.

Value All People

We value all people by respecting and celebrating everyone's individual worth and contributions.

Edward T. Hall states that culture is primarily a system for creating, sending, storing and processing information. Communication underlies everything; therefore, culture encompasses any organization’s values, mores, behaviors, and assumptions. Organizational culture shapes the context for new organizational members; how people and groups interact with each other and with stakeholders. It directly impacts how people think, perceive and feel about an organization.

A compass is an important navigational aid. It helps to find our heading; it guides in the right direction. When off course, it can be used to get back on track. District 49’s cultural compass provides the intended

bearing to students, parents, and staff; how we treat each other and our work. We use the compass to orient us as an organization and as individuals in our execution of the ‘Six Big Rocks’ of our strategic plan.

The heart of the compass rose guides our actions in how we relate to and treat each other.

Respect

We respect others for their abilities, qualities and achievements

Trust

We promote trust in our relationships through honest and open communication

Care

We provide a safe and caring environment for students and staff

Responsibility

We hold ourselves accountable for our actions The outer face of the compass rose guides us in how we treat our work.

Learning

We model continuous learning to encourage lifelong learners

Purpose

We ensure all decisions align with the ‘Five Rocks’

Innovation

We encourage risk taking by supporting creative exploration of new ideas and strategies

Teamwork

We embrace working together to achieve effective results for our students and our community

As our guiding paradigm, the cultural compass creates an atmosphere of teamwork and camaraderie. Maintaining a principle-centered vector to relationships and work increases the cultural capacity of the organization, making District 49 the best district to learn, work and lead.

The District's mission is to put all students on pathways to become knowledgeable citizens of the twenty-first century and empower them to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing world. This can only occur in an environment that contributes to a culture of civility and respect. Students have the right to a classroom environment that encourages learning. Students, teachers, administrators, parents, and guardians should work together to create professional relationships-based trust and mutual respect.

Student rights

All students in School District 49 have the following rights:

• Students have the right of respect from all teachers, administrators, and staff in District 49, regardless of the student’s “race, creed, color, national origin, age, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other protected classification”.
   
• Students have the right to expect certain practices of their teachers. These include establishing clear lesson objectives and requirements through the use of the lesson plans, clearly stating grading scale and criteria, evaluating students fairly, holding timely parent-teacher conferences when issues arise, acknowledging positive student contributions to the class, and protecting students’ academic freedom.
   
• Students have the right to file grievances. Grievances may concern inappropriate Instructor conduct, incompetence in oral communication, punitive grading practices linked to behavior, failure to provide disability accommodations, grading appeals based on inequity of grading standards between students in the same class, and other such issues. Students should bring any grievances to the attention of the teacher, assistant principal, and/or the principal as soon as possible. Only in extraordinary cases may a procedure involving a grievance begin more than six months after the incident.

If you have a complaint about any other aspect of a course, such as the classroom environment, the instructor, the course’s grading system, or class activities (including online and out-of-class assignments), please take the following steps:

1. Talk with your teacher about the situation.
2. If you do not feel comfortable approaching the teacher directly or if the problem continues, you should next talk to the assistant principal (AP), or principal if an AP is not available.
3. Again, if the problem is not resolved or if you are not comfortable talking to the assistant principal, then you may go to the principal, or the zone superintendent if the problem continues and all means of relief have been exhausted at the school level.
4. The student, parent, or guardian may then file a formal grievance through the District’s website by citing the district policy or tenet of this bill of rights that is being violated.
5. In attempting to resolve your complaint, the principal or a district compliance officer as appropriate may convene a special committee to recommend appropriate action. The principal or a district compliance officer will notify the aggrieved party of the outcome of the grievance via District e-mail.

Students with grievances involving harassment and discrimination may also contact one of the Compliance Coordinators once all means of relief are exhausted at the school or zone.

Students with complaints about disability accommodation should notify the Executive Director of Individualized Education.

If you have a concern about sexual harassment, please immediately schedule an appointment with one of the Compliance Coordinators to discuss District policy JBB and any other applicable state laws once all means for relief have been exhausted at the school or zone level.

School District 49 Compliance Coordinators

Student Matters (Section 504, Title VI. Title IX, Title II/ADA-AA)

Dr. Nancy Lemmond, Deputy Superintendent/Executive Director of Individualized Education nancy.lemmond@d49.org | 719-494-8913

Employee Matters (Title VI, Title VII, Title II/ADA-AA)

Ms. Sonia Marroquin-Smith, Human Resources Manager for Culture and Compliance sonia.marroquinsmith@d49.org | 719-495-1142

Mailing address: 10850 E. Woodmen Road, Peyton, CO 80831

Student Responsibilities

• All students are expected to abide by JICDA (Student Code of Conduct) and all other published district policies.
   
• All students are expected to demonstrate engagement during class time. Students who sleep in class or read non-class materials during class disrupt the course, as do students who engage in other non- class activities such as using a smart phone and working on an assignment for another class. This behavior disrupts the learning environment for all involved and compromises the learning process.
   
• The use of abusive or disrespectful language also damages the classroom environment. Inappropriate or disruptive classroom behavior by students is a violation of the District’s policies. Teachers may take immediate restorative or disciplinary action with students who are physically or verbally abusive or disrespectful in a class, or they may refer the matter to the assistant principal or principal for meditation or adjudication if the behavior cannot be resolved within classroom environment.
   
• Students are responsible for seeking help from teachers and staff and for using the provided resources to meet grade level completion requirements.

As a citizen of School District 49, I understand that I play a critical role in providing a safe and positive environment for all other citizens. I pledge to adopt the spirit of Waypoints: The Cultural Path to Conduct, Civility, and Respect, to honor others and myself, and to treat everyone in my school community with fairness and consideration. I commit to celebrate learning. I commit to support teaching and learning by creating and maintaining a safe, orderly, and engaging environment. I commit to promote respectful two-way communication with all school and community members. I pledge to apply Waypoints: The Cultural Path to Conduct, Civility, and Respect in a fair and consistent manner.

User Rights

As a digital citizen of School District 49, you have the right to a safe virtual learning environment, which is free from harassment and discrimination.

• Students have a right to a web presence that is free from cyber-bullying, please see BOE policy JICDF.
• Students have a right to learn using modern tools that empowers learning.
• Students have a right to a managed internet on campus that filters obscene, pornographic, and harmful information.
• Students have the right to know that they have no expectation of privacy while using district computer and internet services.
• Students have the right to, and furthermore are encouraged to, find information that is related to district education objectives.
• Students have the right to a learning environment that includes a focus on digital citizenship and 21st century skills.
• Students have the right to a secure virtual environment and are expected to inform an administrator if they observe students or staff members ignoring their responsibilities.

User Responsibilities

Students are expected to abide by BOE Policy JS and JS-R and all other published district policies concerning student behavior. As a digital citizen of School District 49, all students are held to the same high standards of respectful, transparent behavior while using district accounts and services on the internet and/or district IT assets.

• No student shall access, create, transmit, retransmit or forward material or information: that promotes violence or advocates destruction of property including, but not limited to, access to information concerning the manufacturing or purchasing of destructive devices or weapons.
• No student shall create, access, or distribute content that is pornographic, obscene or other sexually oriented materials, either as pictures or writings.
• No student shall harass, threaten, demean, or promote violence or hatred against another person or group of persons with regard to race, color, sex, religion, national origin, age, marital status, gender identity, or disability.
• No student shall gain a personal profit, financial gain, advertising, commercial transaction or political purposes using district accounts or services.
• No student shall plagiarize the work of another or in violation of any federal or state law, including but not limited to copyrighted material and material protected by trade secret
• No student shall use inappropriate or offensive language to others.
• No student shall provide information that is knowingly false or could be construed as intending to purposely damage another person's reputation.
• No student shall transmit or retransmit information that contains personal information about themselves or others, including information protected by confidentiality laws.
• No student shall use or share another individual’s Internet or electronic communications account or allow their account to be used by anyone, either intentionally or through inaction to protect log-in credentials.
• No student shall download or install software, applications, proxies, or plugins for any reason without written authorization from purchasing and IT services.