7544 - USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Online social media platforms/sites serve as important methods of communication as well as vital e-learning tools. It is critical that students, parents/guardians, employees, volunteers, and other community stakeholders use social media in a safe and responsible manner. Social media is defined in Bylaw 0100.

This administrative guideline outlines requirements for employees’ and School Corporation-approved volunteers' (hereinafter collectively referred to as "employees") use of social media for work purposes, including social media communication with students, parents/guardians, employees, volunteers, and the general public.

This administrative guideline also addresses recommended practices for Corporation employees’ personal use of social media.

This administrative guideline is intended to supplement, not supersede, existing policies, guidelines, or laws. It should be read in conjunction with Policy 5136/AG 5136 - Personal Communication Devices; Policy 7530.02 – Staff Use of Wireless Communication Devices; Policy 7540 - Technology; Policy 7540.02 – Web Content, Apps, and Services; Policy 7540.03/AG 7540.03 – Student Technology Acceptable Use and Safety, Policy 7540.04/AG 7540.04 –Staff Technology Acceptable Use and Safety, Policy 7540.05 – Corporation-Issued Staff E-mail Account; AG 7540.05 – Proper Use of Corporation-Issued E-mail Account; and  AG 7540.06 - Student’s Proper Use of Corporation-Issued E-mail Account.

This administrative guideline does not address students' personal use of social media. Such communications that occur within the school setting, associated with school activities, or which start off-campus but carry over to the school setting and cause or threaten to cause a substantial disruption or material interference with school activities or the educational process are addressed pursuant to the Student Code of Conduct, Policy 7540.03/AG 7540.03 – Student Technology Acceptable Use and Safety; and Policy 5136/AG 5136 - Personal Communication Devices.

Use of Corporation-approved social media sites/networks for professional purposes must comply with all applicable Federal and State laws, including but not limited to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act ("COPPA"), the Children's Internet Protection Act ("CIPA"), the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act ("FERPA"), State public records laws, and intellectual property laws.

General Provisions Governing Use of Social Media

The Corporation recognizes that employees use social media both professionally (i.e., for work) and personally. Employees are reminded that communications that violate State or Federal law, School Board policies, or administrative guidelines, or interfere with an employee's ability to effectively perform his/her job may provide the Corporation with grounds to impose disciplinary action and/or to refer the matter to appropriate law enforcement authorities. If an employee uses social media in a manner or for a purpose that affects his/her job, the Corporation may have a legitimate interest in the employee's activities. This is particularly true since educators are role models for students. For this reason, the Corporation regulates employees’ use of social media with students; the specific purpose of such regulation is to prevent harassment, abuse, or bullying of a student by an employee, and to fulfill the Corporation’s legal obligation to protect the confidentiality of students’ personally identifiable information ("PII").

Students require instruction in how to safely and responsibly use social media. They further need to be taught to be critical consumers and creators of online content. For this reason, employees are permitted to communicate with current students only through Corporation-approved social media platforms/sites and only under specific circumstances. Only certificated/licensed employees, and those employees authorized in writing by the Superintendent or Principal may use Corporation-approved social media platforms/sites to communicate with students. Such employees in the school setting are, therefore, limited to communicating about matters pertaining to reasonable instructional, educational, or extra-curricular program matters. Teachers, in particular, are limited to communicating with students about matters pertaining to the students' classwork, homework, and tests/quizzes. Employees who have extra-curricular responsibilities are correspondingly limited to communicating about the team they coach or the school activity they advise.

The above-stated limitations on an employee’s ability to communicate with students via social media are subject to the following two (2) exceptions:

1. these prohibitions apply only to communications with students currently enrolled in the Corporation; and

2. employees may communicate via social media with relatives, the children of friends, friends of the employee's children, and members or participants in the same civic, social, recreational, or religious organizations.

Employees who engage in social media activities must maintain a separation between professional and personal communications and specifically must avoid communicating regarding professional matters on personal social media accounts.

On Corporation-approved social media platforms/sites that allow for the creation of separate social media accounts, employees must create a separate, dedicated professional account using their Corporation-provided e-mail address if they intend to use their account for work purposes.

Employees’ Use of Social Media for Professional Purposes

When establishing a professional social media account on a Corporation-approved social media platform/site, the employee’s Principal must grant approval for the employee to set up the professional social media presence.

Professional social media sites must include language identifying the site as a professional social media site to differentiate it from personal social media sites maintained by the employee.

Use of social media for professional purposes is limited to matters that fall within the scope of employees’ job responsibilities. Employees should treat social media like a classroom and/or a professional workspace.

Students must use their Corporation-issued e-mail account when joining professional social media platforms/sites maintained by employees.

Employees are required to maintain the confidentiality of students’ PII at all times. Staff members shall not, under any circumstances, share confidential information or records – whether it is an internal school discussion, Corporation records, or specific information about students or other staff – in social media posts. Employees also must protect the confidentiality of health or personal information involving colleagues (unless such disclosure serves a lawful/professional purpose or is required by law). Employees further must abide by copyright laws and are prohibited from knowingly making false statements about a colleague or the school system.

Employees who use Corporation-approved social media with students also must grant, if requested, parents and administrators access to the social media site. Staff members’ communications with students and parents via Corporation-approved social media must be professional, transparent, and of an appropriate nature, purpose, timing, and amount. Employees do not have a right to privacy with respect to school-related communications with students and parents.

Each school year employees are required to notify parents of their intent to use Corporation-approved social media site(s) in their classroom, including the name of the platforms/sites and their purpose.

Teachers who are authorized to post on Corporation-approved social media platforms/sites are cautioned not to allow such postings to interfere with the performance of their teaching responsibilities.

Oversight by Principal

Principals are responsible for monitoring and providing feedback regarding their employees’ professional social media sites. Principals are expected to review their staff members’ professional social media sites on a regular basis.

If a Principal discovers threatening content on a staff members’ professional media site, the administrator must contact the appropriate law enforcement authorities for assistance. If the Principal decides that information on the site is inappropriate, s/he may direct the staff member to remove the material. The Principal has the right to remove postings and/or disable a page if the employee’s professional social media site violates the law and/or this guideline.

If a staff member learns of an inappropriate post, s/he is required to follow existing Board policy and guidelines regarding incident reporting obligations. Additionally, if an employee sees an inappropriate post that involves pornography, the employee should not download or print the image(s); instead, the employee should notify his/her Principal so that law enforcement may be contacted in order to gather this type of evidence. With regard to all other inappropriate posts, the staff member should take and print a screenshot of or download the post to save as evidence. The resulting materials/files should be provided to the Principal, and the employee should complete any required incident report. The Principal should contact the Superintendent to determine how to proceed with regard to contacting appropriate law enforcement authorities.

Posts that include profanity, hate speech, or copyrighted material, are threatening, harassing, racist, biased, personally derogatory/disparaging to others, or involve off-topic remarks addressed to or about other persons to the point that the comments amount to harassment or bullying may be removed, and the employee or student who posted the comment may be subject to discipline. Employees who post sexualized images of minors also may be subject to discipline.

In order for photos/images of a student to be posted online through an employee's professional social media site, the Corporation must have on file written consent completed by the student’s parent authorizing the student’s photos/image to be included in such pictures or videos.

In crisis situations, such as a school lockdown, secure mode, or other crisis, employees should not be posting or asking for information through social media or other forms of external communication such as texts and phone calls. During these situations, employees should focus their attention on making the safety of those in their charge and care their top priority. At such times, it is critical to avoid spreading rumors, and all communications should be handled through the administration.

To keep the page focused, we have set some common guidelines:

1. This page is moderated – all comments are subject to review by the staff member maintaining the page and/or the administration.

2. To ensure exchanges are informative, respectful of diverse viewpoints, and lawful, we will remove comments that are off-topic, spam, contain profanity or other inappropriate language, constitute hate speech, reproduce copyrighted materials without permission, violate Board policy on discrimination or harassment, or violate the platform/site's applicable terms of service."

Any modifications of these guidelines must be approved, in advance, by the Principal.

Employees’ Use of Corporation-Approved Social Media Platforms/Sites for Extra-Curricular Programs

Employees who supervise athletic teams or extra-curricular activities may maintain a professional social media site on a Corporation-approved social media platform/site for the sole purpose of communicating with students and parents about the team or activity.

Authorized staff members who elect to use social media with respect to the teams they coach or the school activity they advise, must provide students and parents of students involved in the team or school activity with the ability to opt-out of using social media for communication purposes associated with the team or activity and must arrange for an alternative method of communicating concerning the team or school activity.

Besides the guidelines listed above under Employees’ Use of Social Media for Professional Purposes, team or extra-curricular activity social media sites must abide by the following additional guidelines. Specifically, employees must:

1. send all posts to all members of the group (i.e., no private messaging);
2. provide the same access to all members of the group to view communications;
3. provide the Principal with full administrative access to the site to facilitate his/her supervision and monitoring of the site; and
4. use his/her Corporation-issued e-mail account when creating the team or extra-curricular activity’s social media site.

The Corporation restricts the use of text messaging between staff and students to employees with responsibility over extra-curricular activities. Staff members who communicate with students using text messaging must comply with the following guidelines:

1. they must obtain written permission from each student's parent/guardian with whom the employee will be communicating via text messaging;

2. all communications must be professional and appropriate;

3. all communications must be limited to matters within the scope of the employee’s professional responsibilities with respect to the extra-curricular activity.

Employees' Personal Use of Social Media

Staff members serve as role models in this community and are responsible for modeling and teaching high standards of decency and civic values. As such, they are expected to display model character both on and off the worksite; this includes any material they post on personal websites and other social media networks, such as Facebook and Instagram. Teachers are responsible for maintaining professional standards in their public use of social media just as they are any other public conduct. Public content on social media can affect and/or undermine an educator's effectiveness. Employees who use social media for personal purposes are responsible for the content on their personal pages, including content added by the employee, the employee's friends, or members of the public who can access and/or contribute to the employee's page. Employees are further responsible for website links on their pages. Employees are cautioned to maintain privacy settings that are appropriate to the content and intended audience.

Employees who maintain personal social networking sites should not share those sites with students.

Under all circumstances employees must comply with Federal and State law, Board policies, administrative guidelines, and the Ethical and Professional Guidelines for School Professionals recommended by the Indiana Department of Education, which include the Code of Ethics for each of the national school professional organizations. This is true regardless of whether the employee is using a personal or Corporation-issued device to communicate through social media.

If a staff member posts messages or pictures that diminish the employee's professionalism or discredit the employee’s capacity to maintain the respect of students and parents, the employee's ability to effectively perform his/her job may be impaired.

Staff members should be respectful and professional in all communications (by word, image, or other means).

Employees should avoid posting text, images, photos, or videos that involve hate speech, nudity, obscenity, or that encourage or depict bullying, discrimination, sexually explicit or violent conduct, or other illegal conduct/activity, including the inappropriate use of alcohol or drugs. They also should refrain from engaging in communication or conduct that is harassing, threatening, libelous, or defamatory.

An employee whose personal use of social media interferes with the employee's ability to effectively perform his/her job may be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment.

Employees may not use their Corporation-issued e-mail address for communication on social media platforms/sites that are not approved by the Corporation or for creating and/or managing social media accounts/sites that are for personal use.

Employees are reminded that the Corporation may monitor the use of Corporation technology resources.

Employees may not use or post the Corporation’s logo or other copyrighted or trademarked materials without express written consent from the Superintendent; however, it is not a violation of this provision if the Corporation's logo auto-fills on sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn.

Teachers are prohibited from posting students' names, photographs and/or videos in which students appear on personal social media sites, except when the images of the students were taken in a public arena, such as at sporting events or fine arts public performances.

Staff members should not "friend" a current student on a staff member’s personal Facebook page. If an employee receives a request from a current student to communicate through a personal social media site, the employee should decline the request.

Except as provided above, teachers are prohibited from knowingly communicating with students through their personal social network page.

http://www.doe.in.gov/sites/default/files/student-services/ethical-guidelines-school-professionals-4-24-17.pdf

© Neola 2019