Acceptable Use Policies – Broad or Specific

Our regional association of DTC/CIOs had an interesting discussion yesterday regarding Acceptable Use Policies. With the growing popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook and the increasing number of personally owned electronic computing devices (smartphones as well as more traditional computers), many districts feel the need to revisit their acceptable use policies. Let’s spend a moment on this and, in particular, focus on the need for a broad policy versus a very specific one.

This is a Kentucky school district example of a broad policy. You won’t find specific mentions of Facebook or personal computing devices in this AUP. That doesn’t mean that the district doesn’t deal with these issues. I suppose that’s really the point I want to make – an Acceptable Use Policy is just that… a policy… and this district likely deals with any number of technology-related behavior issues via other behavior policies rather than specific technology policies.

This policy specifically says that there will be other procedures and guidelines. To quote various areas of the linked document:

shall develop and implement appropriate procedures to provide guidance for access to electronic media. Guidelines shall address teacher supervision of student computer use, ethical use of electronic media (including, but not limited to, the Internet, e-mail, and other District technological resources), and issues of privacy versus administrative review of electronic files and communications. In addition, guidelines shall prohibit utilization of networks for prohibited or illegal activities…

In our discussion, it was pointed out that most Kentucky school districts already have policy that addresses disruption of the educational process. One such policy is linked here. There are several areas of note, but students are subject to displinary action in these specific instances:

Conduct that materially or substantially interferes with another student’s access to educational opportunities or programs, including the ability to attend, participate in and benefit from instructional and extracurricular activities; or

Conduct that materially or substantially disrupts the delivery of instructional services or interferes with the orderly administration of the school and school-related activities or district operations.

If someone posts something offensive to a web site and it “materially or substantially interferes” as stated above, the school district has some latitude to deal with it. If a personal phone is “substantially disrupting the delivery of instructional services”, then the district would have some latitude to deal with it. Certainly, these are sticky areas and I don’t mean to minimize the potential for concern or the proper care that needs to be taken when dealing with issues related to technology-based behavior. My point here is that districts often have existing policy that can be applied to many of these situations. Often, we spend too much time trying to document and label the method of misbehavior when the better course may be to apply existing rules and regulations.