COEUR d'ALENE - The Coeur d'Alene School District is stepping up plans to tackle student behavior issues at the district's middle and high schools.

Superintendent Hazel Bauman announced at Monday's school board meeting that she is calling together a task force focused on weapons, dress code, language, public displays of affection, bullying and the use of electronics devices at secondary schools.

"We have strong policies in place but my vision for this task force is to find ways to better enforce what we have, establish more concrete standards and get parent and community support of the higher bar we wish to set for student code of conduct," Bauman said in a prepared statement issued Thursday by the school district.

The task force will be made up of principals, teachers, students, parents, school resource officers and community members.

Though plans for tackling these issues have been in the works since earlier this year, Bauman decided to step up the timeline for action based on parent input and recent violations of school rules.

An example is the two recent events with knives at schools. One was aggressive, while Wednesday's incident at Lakes Middle School was horseplay that led to an accidental injury. The fact remains that knives are still finding their way into the schools.

"We have a zero-tolerance policy on weapons at school and tough measures are in place to discipline students who violate our rules," stated Bauman. "It is not enough. We must now focus our energies on proactive education and awareness for our parents and our community that we want to make our schools the safest they can be."

The task force will be charged with looking at current policies, doing action research within the schools, looking at other school districts' best practices, developing a community outreach campaign and presenting recommendations to the school board before the end of the school year. Administrators and the school board will have the summer to implement adopted changes to student code of conduct guidelines before classes begin again in the fall.