The Board of Education approved the Newtown High School graduation date and the date for the Newtown Middle School Moving Up Ceremony at its meeting on Tuesday, April 5.newtown.k12.ct.us.

The NHS commencement exercises will be held at Western Connecticut State University's O'Neill Center on Saturday, June 11, starting at 9:30 am.

NMS's Moving Up Ceremony will be held at the O'Neill Center on Wednesday, June 8, at 5:30 pm.

The last day of school, barring any further cancellations of school, according to Superintendent Joseph V.  Erardi, Jr. is Monday, June 13.

The dates passed the Board of Education unanimously.

Also at the meeting, the board heard a presentation on a self-study of the science program in the district, and it approved two policy changes.

As school board Vice Chair Michelle Ku explained, this week was the second time the board's fundraising policy, Policy 1314/1324, came before the board recently. It was changed by the school board roughly a year ago, but Ms Ku said the athletic department at the high school asked the school board to review the changes.

"It was not allowing them to adequately do fundraising within the athletic department," said Ms Ku.

The change last year, according to the school board's discussion, centered around discouraging teams from including freshman in fundraising before a team roster was finalized.

The new changes, Ms Ku said, were based on suggestions from the high school, but she said the board's policy subcommittee would like to review the policy again to review the parameters "more carefully."

School board Chair Keith Alexander likened the changes made this week to "a patch rather than a change." With a new athletic director expected to be hired in the next few months, with the resignation of Athletic Director Gregg Simon this week, the board spoke about including the new director in the discussion of the new policy.

The changes approved by the board this week included exceptions for the hockey, boys volleyball, and girls golf teams from the policy; an exception for varsity players from the previous season to allow them to fundraise with no guarantee of being on the team; and teams that have not cut during the previous two seasons will be allowed to fundraise with no restrictions.

The change to the fundraising policy was approved in a 4-3 vote, with Andrew Clure, Kathy Hamilton, and Debbie Leidlein voting against the motion.

Mr Alexander said it is clear the school board members still think the fundraising policy "needs work," and said the policy subcommittee will oversee it.

The school board also unanimously passed an update to its "Otherwise Lawful Possession of Firearms on School Property" policy, Policy 1700. Ms Ku said the policy was updated to reflect new references to acts and added the word "staff" to the policy, to read in part, "Students and staff are prohibited by the Board of Education from possessing firearms for any reason, whether otherwise lawful or not, in or on the real property comprising the public or private elementary or secondary school or at a school sponsored activity…"

At its meeting on March 15, when the school board first read the proposed changes to the firearms policy, Ms Leidlein said adding the word "staff" made the policy more explicitly state that district staff should not carry weapons on school property.

A science program self-study was conducted by a number of educators from different grade levels in the district, and a presentation was brought before the board at its meeting this week. The educators described content offered at different levels, and shared an explanation of how students can move through the different sciences classes at the higher levels.

The school board discussed adding the presentation to its minutes for the Tuesday, April 5, meeting, which will be made available off of the district's main website,