Online networks off limits to most teachers

Boardman policy forbids staff from interacting with students on Facebook, MySpace.

BY RICK ROUAN

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

Of Ann Michelle McMaster’s four children, three have accounts on social-networking Web sites that link them to friends in the Boardman schools, where officials have adopted a policy that would keep teachers from connecting with students online.

Her children are part of an online network that connects hundreds of millions of people, including an ever-increasing pool of students and teachers who open their personal lives to anyone with the right account. Such networks include Facebook and MySpace.

Now schools, faced with questions about how to regulate teacher behavior on the Web, are considering policies to curb the content teachers can post and ban interacting with students.

“I think the technology is still so new, it hasn’t been sorted out yet what’s appropriate and not appropriate,” McMaster said. “It’s just such a completely new and different way to communicate. ... I think inhibitions are removed.”

The Boardman school district adopted an Ohio School Boards Association policy restricting staff members’ use of social-networking Web sites. The policy prohibits staff from posting “inappropriate” information and interacting with students via electronic media, including social networks.

“I would suppose that staff-student relationships have never always been pure, but as it becomes easier and easier to have relationships with computer availability, [policies] had to be updated to be more current,” said Kim Poma, school board president.

A policy can provide some legal protection to a school district that fires a teacher for posting inappropriate information online because it singles out the sites, said Julia Bauer, a staff attorney at the OSBA.

Bauer said social networks create a problem with “boundaries” when students go home and teachers can still communicate with them online without a third party to monitor the interaction.

Last year, those boundaries blurred when a second-year teacher in Boardman resigned in the wake of an investigation into a student’s complaint that he sent her inappropriate text messages. The teacher, who was in his early 20s, was freshly minted from Youngstown State University.

The university’s Beeghly College of Education addresses questions about student-teacher relationships in a school law class, said Philip Ginnetti, dean of the college.

Ginnetti said the college tells students to refrain from posting information on the Web, where it is easily accessible. He said one student posted seminude photographs of herself on a personal Web site and lost a field experience as a result.

“I think it has made it much more easy for these problematic things to occur,” Ginnetti said. “Things that start out innocently become much more intimate and dangerous.”

When relationships become too intimate, teachers are referred to the state, which can strip a teacher of his or her license.

But the Ohio Department of Education has no policies outlining specifically what teachers can and cannot do on social-networking Web sites, said Scott Blake, the department’s spokesman.

“Our position is that if what you’re doing is inappropriate, you’ll be disciplined,” Blake said. “It doesn’t matter what the medium is.”

The department has cited one teacher for posting inappropriate content to a social-networking Web site. In May 2008, the department sent a Cincinnati teacher a letter warning him to remove a crude photo from the Web or risk losing his certification from the state.

Some local districts have cited a similar standard for using broad policies to cover behavior on social- networking Web sites.

In Warren, the superintendent said she has made it clear that teachers are discouraged from using Web sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, and that the district’s policies apply to the Web, too.

No teacher has been fired solely for inappropriate use of the Web, but “it has played a factor in some cases,” said Kathryn Hellweg, Warren City Schools superintendent.

Austintown Superintendent Doug Heuer said the district has not had a situation that warranted a more specific policy.

“Typically you don’t write rules unless you’re facing situations where a rule needs to be written,” he said, adding that the district uses state rules for professional ethics as guidelines.

Boardman did not adopt the policy in direct response to an incident, and the district frequently adopts OSBA policy suggestions, said Frank Lazzeri, the district’s superintendent.

But McMaster, the mother of two middle schoolers and two high schoolers, worries that rules preventing teachers from communicating with students online could have some negative consequences.

“That’s how kids communicate with each other. It’s what they’re comfortable with,” said McMaster, adding that she would be comfortable with her children interacting with teachers over a social network, within reason.

That’s what officials in Salem are trying to do with the district’s in-house social network, QuakerSpace, which was developed from freely available software.

The private site launched last fall, and the district is using it to teach students how to work in a collaborative setting online, said Cathy Sanor, director of technology for the district.

Boardman schools

Social networking policy

The Boardman Local Schools district approved an Ohio School Boards Association policy that restricts what teachers can do on social networking Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace. The policy says:

1. Staff cannot post “inappropriate data, documents, photographs or other such information that might result in a disruption of classroom activity.” The superintendent has discretion to determine what is “inappropriate.”

2. Staff cannot provide passwords for social networking Web sites to students.

3. Staff cannot have associations with students through virtual technology if they are “irregular, unprofessional, improper or imprudent in ways that negatively affect the goals of the organization.”

4. Staff cannot access social networking Web sites during school hours.

Source: Boardman Local Schools