POLICY AMENDMENTS UP FOR SECOND READING AND APPROVAL FEBRUARY 17

The South Washington County School District has a lot of policies. Some of them, are about to be updated in a regular policy review.

Listed on its website at www.sowashco.org with nine separate categories, some of those policies are up for changes at the February 17, 2022 school board meeting, being reviewed at the February 3 board workshop.

With three of 10 policies under review being recommended for changes, the differences to come post approval extend all the way from “significant edits” to the policy on harassment and violence, to “removed procedures” under student discipline, and finally “moderate changes” to the policy for acceptable technology use, of particular and potentially great consequence to/for the student age population in ISD 833.

Among them in the Technology Acceptable Use policy, is a change to section IX, in which, “Users should have no expectation of privacy when using district equipment and networks.”

More on that in a second. Meanwhile, linked by chapter number heading on the board workshop agenda for February 3, the proposed changes to Policy 413 Harassment and Violence range from the mundane and grammatical— such as changing “includes” to “include” to align with the grammatical subject—to more substantive ones, inserting the term “Protected Class” as defined in the Minnesota Human Rights Act, along with the words “sex, age, sexual orientation, and disability” to clarify the protected classes.

As worded at present, the policy states that it seeks to “maintain a learning and work environment that is free from harassment and violence on the basis of a person’s actual or perceived race, ethnicity, color, creed, religion, national origin, immigration status, gender, marital status, familial status, socioeconomic status, physical appearance, sexual orientation, including gender identity and express, academic status related to student performance, disability, or status with regard to public assistance, age, or any additional characteristic defined in the Minnesota Human Rights Act (MRCA).”

Should the proposed changes to the above policy be approved February 17, the words “sex, age” would be inserted in the paragraph between gender and marital status while “sexual orientation, disability (Protected Class)” would be inserted after the comma for “age, or any additional characteristic defined in the Minnesota Human Rights Act.

Also contained in the proposed changes to the district’s Harassment and Violence policy is working striking “superintendent/designee” from the subsection D of Section III and replacing this with “school district,” while language surrounding the definition of disabled person is also clarified and changed from reading “any condition or characteristic that renders a person a disabled person. A disabled person is any,” to instead read, “with respect to an individual who,” followed by a list of criteria.

A further edit to the Harassment and Violence policy would replace “interview” with “intervene” under subheading E of Section III.

Shifting to removed procedures in the Student Discipline policy, the proposed changes to be approved February 17 would remove a total of over 30 paragraphs related to suspension, exclusion, and expulsion and put these instead into the “procedure form.” The third and final policy to have proposed changes up for approval at the February 17 school board meeting, would see “moderate changes” made to Policy 524 Technology Acceptable Use, the first of which would be to append “Student” to the official policy title so that it reads, “524 Student Technology Acceptable Use and Safety Policy,” as opposed to the previous “Technology Acceptable Use and Safety Policy.”

Among the moderate changes to 524 Technology Acceptable Use and Safety Policy (as the title now stands prior to approval) would be to strike “and employees” in two separate places from Section III, entitled “Limited Educational Purpose.”

With the substitution of “and” for “or” and “worldview” for “world view” among other minor changes, the new technology policy would also strike the wording “Digital citizenship instruction of students and staff will be mandatory” and instead replace this language with, “The school district will educate students about appropriate online behavior, including interacting with other individuals online, on social networking websites and cyberbullying awareness and response.”

Scrolling down the PDF version of the document on the district website, more changes come under Section V, with “BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology)” struck out from the document and replaced with “Technology,” stipulating that technology that uses district networks is held to the same standard as district-owned technology. The impact of this, soon becomes evident, in Section IX of the Technology Policy.

Striking out the word “Limited” from the “Expectation of Privacy” that heads the section, a reworked subheading A reads, “Users should have no expectation of privacy when using district equipment and networks.”

Going on further in Section IX, the policy states that “users should expect that all communications transmitted or received on the district system are PUBLIC INFORMATION and can be given to law enforcement agencies WITHOUT the user’s prior consent.”

As to parent rights, the policy as currently stated and moving forward unchanged states that parents have the right “at any time to investigate or review the contents of their child’s files and email files,” along with “requesting the termination of their child’s individual account.” Parents must sign the AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) prior to their students using the district’s technology, while subheading H of Section IX is struck out of the proposed revision, taking away language that “works created by district employees in the course of their duties and using the district system are the property of the district as works made for hire.”

In addition, subheading C of Section X of the Technology Policy strikes out language stating that, “the employee must sign the Internet Use Agreement for employees” from the revised policy.

Finally and at the bottom, the option for parents to request in writing alternative activities not requiring Internet Access is struck out as well, the revised policy soon to read, “Parents are hereby notified that their students will be using school district resources/accounts to access the Internet.”

A clarification below this in subheading D, meanwhile, states that, “Limited alternatives to internet access may be available. Parents requesting alternate access should contact your student’s principal.”

Pending a February 17 review at the school board, the proposed policy edits, will soon become fact.