Brevard Schools is creating the 2024-2025 student code of conduct. Here are the big changes

Following community workshops that spanned about five months, Brevard's school board plans to implement changes to the student code of conduct for the upcoming year.

At a Tuesday work session, board members agreed on dozens of tweaks to the current code. The final draft of the 2024-2025 code still has to be finalized and approved at a board meeting.

Most proposed changes encompass creating clearer definitions within the code of conduct regarding specific punishable behaviors and the consequences for these behaviors. These changes were proposed by Student Services in collaboration with work groups that met several times since fall 2023.

Those groups were comprised of community representatives chosen by board members, as well as parents, Brevard Federation of Teachers, Brevard Association of School Administrators, the local 1010 union, student advisory council members, school resource officers and other community members.

"We wanted to make sure all stakeholders were a part of this process," said Pamela Dampier, assistant superintendent of student services.

Here are some of the major changes presented at Tuesday's meeting.

Define hate-related offenses

In this year's code of conduct, there isn't a specific code for hate-related offenses. The work groups proposed adding a hate-related incident definition to the 2024-2025 code of conduct. In the current draft, it's defined as "an offense committed all or in part by hostility to the individual(s) real (or perceived) race, religion, color, sexual orientation, ethnicity, ancestry, nation origin, political beliefs, marital status, pregnancy, age, social and family background, linguistic preference or disability."

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Chris Reed, director of student services, said there's also a setting in FOCUS, which is used to report discipline incidents, that will require the person recording a discipline referral to specify whether or not the incident was hate-related. Currently, that question is available but does not have to be answered when submitting a discipline referral.

Going forward with the new code of conduct, he said, they could make the question mandatory.

All board members approved of the suggestion, specifying it should be mandatory for incidents classified as a level three or above. BPS has five disciplinary levels that classify different behaviors based on their severity and the potential threat they pose to students or others within the district.

"There were numerous incidents last year in which this would have really helped," board member Jennifer Jenkins said. "It also would have notified the district that we have a problem in certain areas, certain schools that really need support from the district in those areas."

Address artificial intelligence

Currently, BPS does not have any policies regarding the use of artificial intelligence. However, the work groups proposed adding language to the code of conduct to address this topic by expanding the definition of plagiarism to include AI.

This new definition would specify that plagiarism is the practice of using other's work as your own, and also using AI to create original work.

It could be tricky to enforce the rule, Reed said, as detecting AI can be difficult.

Katye Campbell said while that may be the case, it's still good to have it written in the code of conduct.

"To have the tool in the toolbox for as things move along, because the (AI) detection software is also growing ... we already have it in place," she said. "I think that's a good idea."

'Cyberbullying,''cyberstalking' and 'assault'

Certain definitions were removed from the code of conduct, including "cyberbullying," "cyberstalking" and "assault." This doesn't mean that these aren't still considered punishable offenses. However, they can be coded more accurate under other definitions, Reed said. For example, cyberbullying would likely fall under the umbrella of bullying, and there isn't a reason to have a separate definition for it.

"Assault" was one in particular that overlapped with another definition -- "threat."

"When we have three or four other codes that are also subcategories of threat, it leads to some confusion," Reed said, adding that it can cause difficulty in completing the process of assessing a threat.

Rather than keeping the definition for assault, those incidents can be reported as "threat," "physical aggression" or "simple battery" depending on the specifics of the incident, he said.

The board also discussed numerous policy changes later in the meeting, most of which tweaked language with minimal changes to the actual policies. These changes will be voted on at a March 12 meeting.

Finch Walker is the education reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Walker at 321-290-4744 or fwalker@floridatoday.com. X: @_finchwalker.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Hate offenses, more: Brevard Schools updates '24-'25 code of conduct