Parents need to be more active in their child's academic lives, according to some members of the School Committee, as they discussed the elementary school and middle school 2015 - 2016 handbooks Wednesday night.

Minot Forest Elementary School Principal Joan Seamans and Middle School Principal Dan Minkle presented the handbooks to the Committee. Part of the issues the Committee found stemmed from the fact much of the elementary and middle school handbooks’ language was lifted from the high school handbook.

Committee member Cliff Sylvia said the role of parents is unclear, and that, because the handbooks are for students and school staff, the areas where the word “you” is used is ambiguous.

“If we are using a pronoun to refer to the parents, then, it seems to me, parents should be in the title of the handbook,” Sylvia said.

Committee Secretary Rhonda Veugen said she wanted to see stronger disciplinary language in both handbooks that “encourages and requires parent involvement in helping to address the situation.”

Middle School Principal Dan Minkle said the middle school had, within the last school year, “adjudicated more discipline issues on paper than we have in the history of the school.”

“The administration did their job … and what concerns me, in the big picture, is repeat offenders,” Minkle said. “I don’t think, in some cases, that being punitive made the change we were looking for.”

Committee Chairman Geoff Swett backed Veugen on her desire for stronger language in the handbooks’ discipline section. He said the handbooks’ language, which said parents are responsible for the care of their children, did not hold parents responsible for their child’s behavior. Swett said his “parents felt responsible for my behavior, and I knew it when I misbehaved.”

“Don’t we want to make that statement somewhat stronger?” Swett said. “As long as they send them to school healthy, after that — it’s not my problem, as a parent. It is their problem.”

Sylvia agreed, and said he believed the parents should also be responsible for doing the legwork to get a parent-teacher meeting, not school faculty.

“I think that we have to get out of the mindset that parents are going to burn up the school phone lines trying to get a parent conference, because that’s not going to happen,” Sylvia said.

The Committee, led by Swett, decided the handbooks were not quite ready for review. Swett told Minkle and Seamans to work on the handbooks and come back with them at next month’s meeting.

The Committee also briefly heard Athletic Director Ed Rodrigues' athletic report.