District school boards develop and approve policies and procedures with respect to duties and responsibilities placed upon them by provincial acts and regulations.
- Policies provide general direction and set broad guidelines for behaviour within the board.
- Procedures spell out how the policies will be enacted within various board settings.
In general, policies dictate what to do, and procedures describe in detail how to do it.
District school board policies are sometimes grouped together into sections or areas, for example: School Operations. Each policy may be linked to a procedure. One policy in the School Operations section might be a Student Dress Code to establish expectations for appropriate dress within all the schools of the board and to provide directions for the development, implementation and review of individual school dress codes. A corresponding board procedure would then be created to provide a detailed description of the process to be followed in developing, implementing and reviewing a student dress code within each individual school.