The Glade 4.0

This has come up numerous times in the last week as we prepare for the first day of school in our district. The new Employee Handbook for our school district contains guidelines and policy for computer usage at school, but this is the first time I've seen it contain policy for teacher home use. Here is the pertinent section:

The bothersome part:


Ok. Let me say first - It's a bad idea for teachers to be "friends" with students on a social network page. My personal opinion and that's what I think. Having said that, I have a really bad vibe with the district telling me that I am "prohibited" from associating with students on a social network site.

In addition, this part is going to get questioned very carefully:


If it said "no right to privacy on a school email account" I could accept. However.... my son is in my class. Which makes my wife his parent. Which means that according to that statement, I have no right to privacy with respect to communication to my wife!

Am I reading that wrong?

Try not to bog down in the homeschool vs public school debate, this isn't about that.

Given the way I know public schools operate (my mother recently retired from a public school district), I would have to say that no, you are not reading it wrong. It's also time for you to call a lawyer.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I was thinking about the lawyer path. But I was also going to take this to my boss on Monday for "clarification"

I don't think I'd be willing to trust your boss's clarification. Not because I think your boss is intentionally trying to schmooze you, but because I don't think your boss has accurate information.

A good chunk of the lawyers working for school districts are washed-up paralegals who failed the bar. There's a good chance that such an individual is responsible for writing your employee handbook. Nepotism is king for school district administrators.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

This is true. I was discussing this with my wife, and it looks like someone just copied the whole thing, lock, stock and barrel from another school district. Certainly there was no forethought put into it.

Lawbreaker!

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Talking to someone is useless, you need something in print from the school district to trump something in print from the school district.

Get with a lawyer and put something in print for yourself.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Another troubling aspect of this even if you didn't have your own son in your class is the "and parents" bit in general. Doesn't that parent have a right to privacy? How exactly does the school think it has the power to tell parents they don't? By saying you don't have a right to privacy when talkign to parents, they're essentially saying the parents don't either.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

If you're talking via professional relationship, it's in the school's best interest to eliminate any perceptions of conflicts of interest. I would prefer to talk in person myself regardless. I'm old fashioned.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Which is fine, but as has been suggested already, lawyer up first, have a prepared statementa nd document ready for them to sign, and if nessecary bring him with you.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Call a lawyer and discuss your options. It isn't a foregone conclusion that you'll end up in a lawsuit with the school district in November of 2011, but if you are then you'll be glad you got legal counsel now.

Get your son into a different fine art class. Get him out of yours by half past yesterday.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Do you have a bad vibe with a policy that prevents you from dating your students?


I think it odd that your school district allows you to have a pupil your own children, but I think this puts you into a special category for which the policy doesn't apply.

However, given the nature of public schools and mandates, I am not in the least surprised by this policy, and support it. As a parent, I would expect full and complete access to any information given to my child about school related topics.

I suspect though this policy has less to do with protecting the parents rights to being informed about the educational status of their child and much more to do with liability against teachers fraternizing with students (see all the recent cases about teachers having sex with their underage students) or protecting the district from any suits regarding potential "favoritism" from more personal relationships between teachers and their student's parents.

I think Ladas is onto something....not allowing you to fraternize with students probably has more to do with liability than anything else.
You'd be surprised how many teenagers cry foul when nothing happened just to stir up drama, provide a cover for their behavior, or get the heat from the parents off of them in regards to grades.
Sad, but it happens.
Some of those "prohibitions" are to protect you and the school district from those kinds of things.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

That's the thing; there's nothing wrong with the policy on the face of it. The problem is that there are all kinds of ways it could be abused by the district. School districts are infested with teachers and administrators that worry excessively about liability and theink themselves amateur lawyers. There's always someone on the lookout for an excuse to hammer someone else for some perceived misdeed, or for something that could be taken as a misdeed by some imaginary person.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yes, you're reading it wrong. Specifically, too much into it. First, it's a very good idea to force teachers, who communicate with students, to maintain a professional relationship with the students. Second, as part of a professional relationship, privacy is not warranted nor should be expected.

Lastly, this rule is not intended to apply to your family. Yours is a unique situation that does not warrant discussion in the handbook. It is incumbent upon you to be able to deal both professionally and personally with your child, and maintain an appropriate split between the two (i.e. you are not "dad" in the classroom).

To deal with the seemingly inflexible language, you simply need to file a formal letter with your administration stating that you have no intention of applying these rules to your relationship with your son and your wife. Explain the split you will maintain with your relationship with your son, and that's the end of it.

I'm quite certain they will be happy with the letter. If they raise a stink, then you can talk to your lawyer. I promise - they will not care.

I don't see that it matters what the intention of the policy is, the question is - should Riudi allow policy to dictate the character of the relationship he has with his students?

I'm thinking about some of the better teachers I had and how that would have affected my education, and I'm not in favor of a CYA policy when the students are the loosers.

I see no benefit in the policy other than the school covering it's ***.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Um, yes? Um - hell yes? The entire job dictates the character of the relationship he has with his students. Teach them this, send them to the administrator's office when they do this, etc etc.



You can be a good teacher, and you can have personal interactions with the kids. However, why does a teacher need privacy to interact with someone else's kid? What is the problem with them having these relationships in the open, if everything is kosher? Why can't this be done from the teacher's professional facebook page, under the scrutiny of the parents?



It's good for everyone. The teachers don't get in trouble, parents know what's going on with their kids, and the school's *** is covered. I see no downside.

Actually, what is the downside, Taskiss? What do you see that would be bad here?

I disagree with the underlying assumption here that students would never have anything confidential to discuss with a teacher.

Failure to protect any such privacy (not that everything must be private but that some things may be) could risk more harm to students than it prevents.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I've had teachers we could actually talk to, who expressed an interest in us. There was a group of kids when we were in school that did several things together... we were in the same science class, we all joined jr. achievement together, etc. Our science teacher would DO things with us on weekends. Our jr. achievement teacher was the same way, doing the weekly meeting things and then following up through the week in different ways. Shop teachers worked with kids on the weekend on cars and such. We had their home phone numbers, etc. They weren't as much our friend as they were our mentors.

Of course, those were different times. Perhaps today it would be best if there were no interaction outside the classroom.

More's the pity.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Loss of the mentorship role in society is sad, I agree.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I don't see where the policy's posted in this thread would in any way curtail any of those activities.

I do.


As a student, what kind of relationship do you have with someone if you have no expectation of privacy? I see students being the loosers here.

Perhaps what I think would be missing has already been missing though and I just didn't know it - if you don't know, you must not have ever been exposed to it.

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In time, this too shall pass.

For discussions such as these, I'm quite certain there are policies in place to handle them. No, they should not be made public, and no, they probably should not be kept just between the teacher and the student, either.

I had the same thing. Again, though - this doesn't need to be private. That's my point. This can all be done and discussed on the teacher's professional website. And I'd be shocked if you suggested you should have been able to hang out with your proff on the weekends without a parent's permission.

Obviously I can't really comment on what experiences you had with instructors or if they would have been affected by this.

But given my own experiences, I had really great relationships with many teachers growing up. Many of those teachers took time out of their days to provide me extra information or guidance. And I can't think of any of those conversations that would have been impacted by that. In fact, I think it's niave to think that there's ever been an expectation of privacy.

I'm curious what kinds of conversations or interactions do you think a teacher could or should have with a student that would require privacy?