SAUGUS — The School Committee’s Policy Subcommittee is looking to update the district’s student code of conduct and policies regarding bullying and cell phones, some of which have remained unchanged for decades.

Subcommittee member Kim Gibbs, a teacher in another district who is also a parent of a Saugus Public Schools student, said that the student handbook has barely changed since her eldest child, who graduated in 2018, was in school. The handbooks of surrounding districts, she added, have changed in that time.

Subcommittee member Michelle Sullivan, who is also a parent of a student in the district, asked why there is no standing subcommittee to review and update policies every few years.

“I graduated high school in 1993,” Sullivan said. “Why do we have a policy from 1994? Because I can tell you there is not a single thing that is the same in schools from when I was in school.”

Vincent Serino, a subcommittee member and the chair of the School Committee, said that the Policy Subcommittee is supposed to perform the role that Sullivan described. He said that the subcommittee began updating the district’s policies last year, but probably should have started updating its student policies first instead of the district’s general policies.

The district’s disciplinary and phone policies came under scrutiny last month when a video of a violent incident at the Saugus Middle/High School was recorded by students and spread throughout the town. At the subcommittee meeting, both Gibbs and Sullivan said that their children had experienced bullying in the district.

Gibbs said that as part of the district’s restorative practices, the students responsible for these actions have to be involved in conversations to resolve the issue.

“My child (experienced) three different incidents, and it was all racially motivated,” Gibbs said. “So, at one point are we going to have a specific conversation with the students that are targeting another student, and naming it, saying it, recognizing it, and having that conversation with the parents?”

Sullivan pointed to the district’s bullying policy, which lists five examples of behavior that constitute bullying.

“Every single one of these my child has been a victim of,” Sullivan said. “Every single one of these I’ve reported to the school since October.”

“I get pushback… no support,” she added. “The support was to disrupt the victim, not the bully. That was the repeated suggestion.”

Gibbs said that she had to write her own daughter’s safety plan because the administration didn’t know how to do so. She also said that she only learned about one bullying incident from her daughter, as neither the school nurse or administration informed her.

Serino said that improving communication between the district’s schools and teachers has to be a priority.

“This sends me into a freaking rage, that you can’t pick up a phone and call a parent,” he said. “My wife’s a teacher so I understand. If there’s something going wrong with a kid, she picks up and reaches out to the parent. That’s the first line.”

He asked why parents have to wait days to hear back from people in the district.

Members of the subcommittee also stressed that the district’s policies need to be clearly understood and followed by teachers. 

“We can do a 50-page book of this, but if we’re not going to educate the teachers on how strict we have to be, then there’s just no consequences,” Subcommittee Chair and School Committee member Stephanie Mastrocola said.

The district’s cell phone policy was also a point of discussion at the meeting. Sullivan said she was under the impression that students were supposed to have their phones in their bags.

Mastrocola said that parents argued against this, and Sullivan said that she knew parents whose children’s phones have been stolen from the baskets of teachers who require them to be placed there at the beginning of class. 

Sullivan said that the phones should be kept in students’ bags.

“I agree, but you’re going to get a lot of pushback on that,” Mastrocola said.

Before the next subcommittee meeting, Superintendent Michael Hashem will draft a new code of conduct for the subcommittee to review.