Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. board members on Monday unanimously voted to terminate an agreement with an education consulting firm that assisted with BCSC policies and approve an agreement with another as a replacement.
BCSC was under contract with NEOLA, who managed BCSC’s board policy platform and updated policies based on changes in state and federal legislation, as well as changes in case law. The board opted to enter into a new agreement with Indianapolis-based firm Church Church Hittle and Antrim to do the same.
BCSC Superintendent Chad Phillips said Church Church Hittle and Antrim will undergo a comprehensive policy review of all BCSC policies over the next year-and-a-half, “resulting in a new, simplified policy stucture that’s easy for the public and for others to process and read.”
The firm will streamline policies and elimate any redundancies, BCSC officials said. As an example, there are currently “somewhere between 12 and 14 NEOLA policies” that BCSC has related to anti-harrassment and anti-discrimination, Phillips said, which will be replaced with one policy called the anti-harrassment and anti-discrimination policy.
“So simplification, as opposed to duplication and complexity,” Phillips said.
This means the board will review and vote whether to approve between 10 and 20 BCSC policies each meeting over the next year-and-a-half, according to Phillips.
Enlisting the firm’s services come at “a little bit lower of a cost” than NEOLA, Phillips said, and the policy updates will be more timely because Church Chuch Hittle and Antrim is Indiana-based.
“So they’ll wait until the legislative session is over, wait until all of the regulatory agencies have done their review, and then come to us with an update,” Phillips said. “So the timing is better and the cost is a little lower.”
The cost for the work is about $16,000 over two years, according to Phillips.
