Student/Staff Communication Policy Approved By School Board

The Spring-Ford Area School District board approved a long-germinating policy on student/staff communications at Monday night's meeting, setting defined rules on how students and staff contact each other via e-mail, social media and texting as well as phone calls. 

Policy committee chair Julie Mullin told Patch that the policy was needed because there are many more ways to communicate now and the district needed to be concerned about inappropriate content in communications. 

The policy strictly limits the circumstances in which staff and students can communicate and defines what is considered inappropriate content. 

The policy defines two things central to the policy: an "unprofessional relationship" and "inappropriate content." 

An "unprofessional relationship", as defined by the policy, is a relationship where a staff member fraternizes or communicates with a student as if the staff member and that student were peers.

The policy defines "inappropriate content" as "any content unrelated to homework, classwork, district approved extracurrciular activites or interscholastic athletic programs, or a letter of reference for a higher education application, scholarship opportunity or career opportunity."

The committee explored policies in other districts and found that they ranged from no policy at all to completely prohibiting any outside communication.

"We wanted teachers to be able to help students outside of school if necessary, we didn't want to take that away," Mullin said. "Coaches wanted to be able to text team members, if they needed to tell them what time to be on the bus or something."

However, Mullin said, many of the coaches have group text lists where they text the students and their parents at the same time, so parents are aware of those communications.

"Then we have instances where an athlete texted a coach and said, 'This college wants to recruit me, what do I do?' and we didn't want to eliminate that kind of support that a staff member could give," Mullin said.

Mullin said the committee got input from all levels of staff, including teachers, coaches and administrators, as well as parents. 

Parents will be able to give permission each school year for their child or children to be contacted via e-mail, call or text message by school staff. 

Mullin said the committee is also looking at other options, such as an app that will make any text messages a one-way communication.

The policy calls for an investigation, should a staff member violate the policy, and punishment for a violation could be up to and including termination.