Standard 1.4: Policies

Payson High School is a member institution of the Nebo School District, one of the larger school districts in the state of Utah with over 34,000 students. Nebo School District policies can be seen at the attached link. We encourage all faculty and staff to adhere to district policies and procedures. Each district policy has been implemented with the goal of increasing student learning. In addition to the district policies and procedures, PHS has an institution-specific faculty and staff handbook.

Each year the school district revises policies that are approved by the school board, ensuring that all policies are reviewed in a timely matter. (See the attached link to view Nebo Board meeting minutes.) Additionally, at the school level, our policies and procedures are updated yearly to ensure that we are in compliance with Nebo School District Policies. Every year, each employee receives training on critical policies.

Faculty and staff receive training on policies and procedures at the start of each school year. These policies are regularly updated and revised due to the needs of our school and district. The yearly training is provided through a district Canvas course. The general consensus from the faculty is that the training is necessary and includes the needed information, but the actual execution of the training is boring and does not follow skillful pedagogy. In addition to the Canvas course, completed independently by faculty and staff, we also cover several critical policies in person. The artifact here is the slideshow that accompanied one of our face-to-face critical policy trainings: Diversity.

An area for improvement we have identified, and that we have control over, is in training our community volunteers. We have noticed that sometimes they will violate school or district policies out of ignorance. A plan is in place to develop a short (and hopefully effective) training module for our volunteers to complete prior to beginning their volunteer work.