District 304 Board: Teachers Can't 'Friend' Students on Facebook

School District 304 teachers can befriend students in the classroom. They can even help students find social service agencies to help them with problems at home.

But they can’t “friend” students on Facebook or other social media websites, according to a new update to the district’s student supervision policy that the Board of Education approved Monday.

The change adds “personal, non-school-related electronic communication” to the ways in which teachers and other district employees cannot interact with students. The original policy also prohibits asking students to run non-class-related errands, supplying them with drugs, tobacco or alcohol and engaging in sexual contact, either by word or action.

In addition, the update prohibits staff from texting or e-mailing students, as well as teachers posting photos of students on websites such as YouTube or Flickr unless district officials authorize them to do so.

The updated policy requires teachers to block student access to their personal pages on Facebook, MySpace, Live Journal and other social networking websites and to avoid posting on students’ social media pages.

Classes could put up their own web pages on district web servers on which they could post blogs, questions and other educational communications, if district officials approve the web page creation.

“If an (academic) department had a Facebook page, students and teachers could do wall postings about class assignments, as long as they couldn’t use it for private communications,” suggested Board of Education member Matt Henry in a Policy Committee meeting in May.

Staff members who violate the updated policy could face dismissal, noted Assistant Superintendent Craig Collins.