About Policies and Regulations

Generally, the role of a School Committee is to set policy and the role of the administration is to implement it through regulations.  Written policies are the chief means by which a School Committee governs the schools, and regulations are one of the means by which the committee's policies are implemented.  The following definitions provide a distinction between these two types of statements:

Policies are principles adopted by the School Committee to chart a course of action.  They are broad enough to indicate a line of action to be taken by the administration in meeting a number of day-to-day problems while being narrow enough to give the administration clear guidance.

Regulations are detailed directions usually developed by the administration to put policy into practice.

These definitions are serviceable some of the time.  They reflect sound theory of governance and administration.  But policies and regulations are obviously closely related.  They can and do merge, making it difficult to ascertain where one begins and the other ends.  For example:

  • State and federal governments require school committees to make or officially approve detailed regulations, and procedures in certain areas.
  • A School Committee signs contracts and agreements that may contain and interweave policies, regulations, and procedural detail.
  • The public staff, or school committee members may demand that the School Committee itself, not the administration, establish specific regulations and procedures in certain sensitive areas.

It is the intermingling of policy and regulation in law, in contracts, and in adopted statements of the School Committee that can cause confusion.  Sometimes they are not easily separated.  Therefore, the separation of policies and regulations in this manual follows several "rules of thumb" in addition to basic theory:

  1. When the school system's practice in a particular area is established by law, any informational statement covering the practice is presented as "policy" and is printed on a white page.  (A law may, of course, be quoted or referred to in a regulation.)
  2. When a school system's practice in a particular area has been established through a negotiated agreement, any statement pertaining to that practice is presented as "policy".
  3. Where the School Committee has interwoven regulations with policy and where separation would interfere with their meaning, the entire statement is presented as a policy.
  4. Where the School Committee has adopted rules and by-laws concerning its own organizational and operating procedures, these statements appear as policy.  As long as the administration operates within the guidelines of policy adopted by the committee, it may issue regulations without prior committee approval, unless law requires committee action, or unless the committee has specifically asked that certain types of regulations be submitted for committee approval.  The School Committee is to be informed of all school system regulations issued by the administration.  All such regulations are subject to committee review.