Teachers, coaches and other staff at Barrington School District 220 will no longer be allowed to contact students through personal e-mails and social networking sites, under a new district policy.
They also will need permission from parents if they want to text message students from a personal cell phone.
The board this month unanimously voted in favor of the new policy that has been in the works since spring. The policy is aimed at keeping a watchful eye on newly developing forms of communication and how they could be used between teachers and students.
“We’re not trying to cut off communication between teachers and students,” school board President Brian Battle said. “We still want teachers to be the mentors, but we also want to put some boundaries around these communications.”
District spokesman Jeff Arnett said the district has not had problems with communication tools, but also recognizes that social networking and texting have becoming increasingly popular.
“We wanted to be proactive in developing a policy rather than waiting for a potential problem to occur,” he said.
The new policy states that employees may communicate online with students only about school-related matters and only through district-approved or district-hosted electronic accounts and applications, such as district e-mail addresses and the official district Web site.
Supt. Tom Leonard said there is no reason for a teacher to use a social networking site or personal e-mail account to reach a student. Teachers are able to log into their district e-mail accounts from any computer.
The policy reminds staff who are on social networking sites to abide by legal requirements concerning students, such as compliance with student privacy laws.
It also states employees cannot make or post any discriminatory, confidential or threatening comments about the district, its employees, students or parents. Employees will be personally liable for their own commentary. In addition, employees can’t engage in any communication or activity that violates the district’s Internet or anti-harassment policies.
The new policy also regulates cell phone communication. If employees wish to use their cell phone to reach students they must first notify the school principal and then obtain written or electronic consent from the student’s parent.
Leonard said club sponsors and coaches have found text message to be an efficient way to reach large groups of students at once.
“I would call it appropriate use and we don’t have any trouble with those, but we want the parents in the loop,” Leonard said.
In creating the new policy, the district had few prototypes to turn to, according to Arnett. He and other staff consulted with the district’s legal counsel who further researched the matter. They looked at similar policies from the few school districts that had them in addition to those in the private sector.
Though the policy has been adopted, it won’t be in full effect until mid-January in order to give the district time to create new parent approval forms and other guidelines.
carusin@tribune.com
