Following Sex Scandals, Districts Impose Message Ban
Miss. Districts Ban Texting, Social Web Sites Between Students and Teachers
Randy Hodges, superintendent of the Lauderdale County, Miss., school district that instituted the "no text message" policy between teachers and students, maintained that his district's new policy was not in response to any particular incident, but acknowledged that the rules were designed to prevent sexual misconduct.
"We had a lawyer who gave ... the example that three employees in the state who had inappropriate messages on their text ended up in prison, to make a long story short," Hodges said. "The messages had some sort of inappropriate language and sexual content, and this was designed to prevent just that -- it's about us trying to be proactive and not having to deal with it after the fact."
While text messaging has grown to become a favored form of communication for teenagers, the rise of Internet social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook presents an even newer source of administrative and parental concern.
Material posted by both students and teachers on social networking sites has led school boards to take disciplinary action.
"The policy is always playing catch-up to the technology, and that's what's happening with these schools," said National School Board Association (NSBA) senior staff attorney Tom Hutton. "They're relatively new policies because the use of these kinds of platforms for educational purposes is relatively new; you want to encourage the use of technology, but how do you make sure you're protecting children against some of the potential downsides?"
Ben Burnett, superintendent of the Lamar school district that banned teacher-student communication on social networking sites, said he didn't expect the national media attention that has followed the district's new policy, but added it was common sense to regulate Internet communication.
"We didn't know we would be blazing a trail with this, but I would assume that with so many people of all ages using the Internet and these kinds of sites, it would be such an easy way for children to get drawn into an inappropriate relationship with an employee," he said. "But our policy doesn't prevent students and teachers from creating and using these type of sites -- that's their First Amendment rights. This is just to restrict communication that might only occur on informal, social Web sites."
Burnett said the district has to be careful when restricting communication between students and teachers.
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