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At the April 9 Board of Education meeting, Board President Anne Neumann included in her report a summary of the introductory comments she made on behalf of the Board at the April 1 Institute Day regarding the Board’s support of teachers exercising their right to express constitutionally protected speech and their responsibilities under Board policy when communicating. Board Briefs from the April 9 meeting will summarize her report, but this topic is important enough to address it in a separate communication.
Social Media and Constitutionally Protected Speech
District 113 staff can choose to have personal social media pages. Policy 5-125 Personal
Technology and Social Media; Usage and Conduct and Policy 5-125 AP 1 establish that
personal social media accounts must be personal–this means that the account is identified as a staff member’s personal account, unrelated to that person’s role as a D113 employee. It also means not including current students on the account.
Within these parameters, staff should feel free to express on their personal social media pages constitutionally protected speech that reflects their individual views. Staff should also be free from being harassed, trolled, canceled, etc. when expressing constitutionally protected speech that people disagree with. District 113 is a great school community with great schools, and that greatness comes from being great at things, academics, the arts, sports, etc. To take the February statement from the Board about civil discourse one step further, all of us in the District 113 school community should aspire to greatness of civility, which sounds quaint these days if not naive. I hope we are not so cynical to think it’s impossible. One measure of civility is how our school community responds to social media posts with which they disagree or decisions with which they disagree.
Personal social media accounts owned by staff are different than professional accounts owned by District 113 but administered by staff. Professional accounts are those that exist as part of a person’s professional role or employment. Policy 5-125 AP1 also defines which social media platforms are approved for use in D113. Importantly, the policy explicitly states that the private messaging features of approved platforms must be disabled.
Secondly, we know that communication between District 113 staff and students is vitally
important. From changes in practice times to homework assignments to counseling
appointments, students and staff must be able to communicate with each other in a timely
manner. They must also be able to communicate safely.
Policy 5-125 also addresses communications between staff and students and defines which
methods are approved for staff-to-student communication. Communication between students and staff regardless of the occasion for that communication should only be done through the “accepted means of communication.”
Accepted Means of Electronic Communication between Staff and Students
Policy 5-125 AP-2 lists the approved means of electronic communication staff may use to
communicate with students. The accepted means are listed below. Please note text messages between individual cell phone numbers is not one of the approved methods.
- District 113 Google Workspace, which includes D113 email and chat
- D113-managed tools:
- Remind
- BB Comms - Finalsite
- Constant Contact
- Infinite Campus
- ParentSquare
- Schoology
Note that Snapchat and TikTok are not listed as approved platforms and should not be used for communications between staff and students.
Bruce Law, Ed.D.
Superintendent of Schools
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