Evaluation of My District's Social Media Policies

The following is from last year's employee handbook.  Policies remain the same this year.

Image property of Butler School District 53, Oak Brook, Illinois

This policy is, of course, meant for all district staff, administrators, teachers and aides.  Let's evaluate:

• Item 1: It is just this kind of policy that scared me away from using social media at all when I first started teaching.  10 years ago, when I changed careers from graphic designer to educator, a teacher at my first school was fired for violating this particular policy in that district.  All she did was post pictures on MySpace of her and her friends at a bar, but administration felt that a teacher in that kind of situation sent a non-professional message to parents and students.  My question, can employers really regulate your personal lives?  This has come into question with the whole "bended knee during the Anthem" movement at sporting events recently.  If you're a public figure in any way, be careful what you post if you don't want to send the wrong message - think before you act!  It's a shame that someone has to write down a rule for something that should be common sense.  Sorry, Charles Barkley, you are a role model...
• Item 2: Our district provides many outlets for communicating with parents: Google Classroom, school- and district-level Twitter and Facebook accounts, and parents have to provide email and phone numbers.  Again, it's common sense to use your school-related and not personal methods like email to contact parents.
• Item 3: Using technology to interfere or disrupt the learning environment... I'm not sure how to do this on purpose, but I do know that when technology doesn't work, it becomes quite the disruption to the learning environment trying to get your crashed laptop back up and running or revert to a pencil-and-paper method when the internet connection all of a sudden goes out!
• Item 4: Don't use personal social media to transmit messages about school related stuff, especially when there are student images.  Keep your personal accounts personal, and your professional accounts professional.  And use common sense to avoid getting dinged for not following Item 1 above!
• Item 5: Don't use the district's or school's logo for your personal use.  Not sure why you would, but it don't belong to you.  Using it for school-related stuff is just fine.
• Item 6: There shouldn't be much of a reason to use school technology for personal use, but a need I could think of is to check email.  Only do this during prep periods if you can't do this on your personal device, and make sure that you are using a professional tone because even though you are using your personal email service, the device belongs to the school, and therefore subject to search and possibly public record.  See here from the Texas Classroom Teacher's Association for a good set of guidelines for this here.
• Item 7: If it's not school-related, don't go to that site!  Again, common sense!  Many districts have firewalls set up for this reason, but they are not foolproof.
• Item 8: The district could take away your personal tech if it is deemed you are using it inappropriately.  Assuming you still have your job, in my district it is required to use a secondary security policy when logging in to school internet devices.  In other words, every 30 days, whenever I log in to a school workstation with my district's Google ID, I have to check the Google App on my iPhone to check for a login message and accept before I can log in to the workstation.  If my iPhone gets confiscated, how would I be able to perform my teaching duties that require technology?

For students, the only mention that I could find of any kind of policy is in the "Technology System Acceptable Use Policy" that I received at the beginning of the year on the first in-service day back in August:

Students will only use social media sites or apps as directed by teachers and/or principal and in strict accordance with the guidelines designated by the teacher, principal or superintendent.

I think this is a little ambiguous.  Does this mean using school-related technology?  Grades 3-8 have Chromebooks, and grades 6-8 can take their Chromebooks home (in the fall, this privilege might be granted to grades 3-5 as well.  Especially at the junior high level, as was true at my previous district, students did have their own Facebook/Twitter/Instagram accounts, and many social/behavior issues that of course, end up being played out at school, started as a comment or post on social media.  I can see the district saying, "Hey, don't use school equipment for this," but can the district really govern what happens outside of school on non-school devices?  Isn't that up to the parents to keep a watchful eye on their child's use of technology and social media?

A resounding theme here is that teachers need to use common sense.  Social media is EVERYWHERE!  We deal with kids, and their parents.  We are public members of the community, and therefore we are held to a higher standard.  We need to act like it.  And it's unfortunate that there are enough fools out there who did not use common sense that required that these kinds of policies be written.