No Internet for Your Kid
I regularly check the district's website for updates. Here's the latest one (bold mine):
All Seattle Public School students in grades K–12 will be able to access their personal email accounts from District computers beginning this fall. This change comes at the request of District principals with approval of senior leadership.
SPS is not providing email accounts to students, nor is SPS recommending that students get personal email accounts if they do not already have them. SPS is instead allowing students to access their personal email accounts from District computers for academic and learning purposes only.
Access to personal email from District computers will not reduce or eliminate other filtering of Internet content and does not conflict with the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA). However, access is governed by all applicable SPS policies and agreements including:
• Student Network Agreement
• Students Rights & Responsibilities
• Policy 2202 & Procedure 2022 SP (Electronic Resources and Use of Internet)
Access to personal email from District computers will not reduce or eliminate other filtering of Internet content and does not conflict with the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA). However, access is governed by all applicable SPS policies and agreements including:
• Student Network Agreement
• Students Rights & Responsibilities
• Policy 2202 & Procedure 2022 SP (Electronic Resources and Use of Internet)
Point in fact; Electronic Resources is 2022, not 2202.
Parents can elect to "opt out" and not allow their students to access personal email by completing theInternet Opt Out Form included in their Start-of-School Packets and on the District website under Forms.
Please Note: Students who opt out of Internet access will not have access to any Internet services including email.
For general information, contact: Carmen Rahm, Chief Information Officer
Parents can elect to "opt out" and not allow their students to access personal email by completing theInternet Opt Out Form included in their Start-of-School Packets and on the District website under Forms.
Please Note: Students who opt out of Internet access will not have access to any Internet services including email.
For general information, contact: Carmen Rahm, Chief Information Officer
Where - to - start?
First, I see some public disclosure requests in my future because I am not buying that principals are asking for this (and I certainly don't think teachers are).
"Access personal email accounts"..."for academic and learning purposes only." This can only be called utterly ridiculous. Are teachers sending e-mail for homework assignments? No, as NOT all kids have access to the Internet outside of school. And, if there is academic value to having kids access their e-mail, doesn't that put kids without e-mail at a disadvantage?
Then I have to wonder about why this notice tells you what the policies and agreements are but doesn't provide links. Wouldn't want parents to look those up, right?
You're welcome. (I see some troubling things in these but that discussion will come later. The district's policies around data and technology are NOT all they should be.)
And the kicker? If you DON'T want your kid to access his/her e-mail at school during the school day, well, then your student can't have access to ANY Internet services.
I don't think this one will stand without further discussion.
Comments
or should only kids rich enough have email?
nearly asleep
Let's hire some High School techies to program the either-or, or both. Give them some extra credit for their weekend of work and be done with it.
Dang - SPS. This is Seattle. Technically pathetic won't fly.
-StepJ
Ams
Bypassing the filters is very easy when kids have access to home email. They simply mail themselves a link to a proxy site, open home email (now sanctioned by the district) and click on the proxy site. With monitored school email, less chance of this getting through. What an absolutely short-sighted, asinine policy.
As for trusting kids? Trust but verify. Kids are kids, and if they think they can get away with something, they will try. And I say this as someone who has helped schools to investigate porn, cyberbullying, threats, etc. sent from kids as young as 4th and 5th grade. The district has just given kids license to get away with all kinds of things. Egads.
CT
Gen Ed Mom
Constant group projects requires access to email & sharing documents. I have even had time-sensitive information emailed to my student from teachers after school started.
If kids can't have access to personal emails then SPS should provide them with school emails that they can access at home, school or the public library.
How are schools currently policing personal access to emails via phones?
-More Barriers
CT
GEM
I'd also like to echo the comment about how this allows some kids equitable access to the internet. While it may seem like everyone you know has internet, I assure you, there are plenty of children whose only ability to access the internet is here or at a public library.
I understand parents need for privacy and it seems like the all or nothing policy is a little extreme, but this is the 21st century and teachers and students need access to the basic tools of the world wide web.
Working on an Unpaid Day
This is a ridiculous policy. It is the duty of SPS to separate email functions from apps. Students can and should have access to all school-approved apps. Email can and should be accessed on a parent-approved basis.
That's what's best for students. The SPS legal office needs to stop trying to run operations.
-Aghast
Nearly Asleep, it doesn't say the district will allow them to CREATE personal e-mail, only access accounts they have already. If you are a kid without Internet access at home, you probably don't have one. Where's the equity in that?
Ams, you may not have a middle or high school student yet. Or you may totally trust your kid. My experience is that kids that age need monitoring and this doesn't help.
As far as privacy, the district should not have either/or for access to the Internet at school. That part is just wrong.
Gen Ed Mom
I'll add that those worried that this makes circumventing district filters easier can rest easy: they're absurdly easy to circumvent NOW, and EVERY kid knows how. The filters are a joke, and are actually more disruptive to learning than they are an aid: students doing research on, say, BRCA identification and genetic testing cannot DO that research, because the BRCA gene is for "breast" cancer, and therefore, all the links are filtered out. Idiotic.
Kids live in a wired world, whether we like it or not, and that genie is not going back in the bottle. Better to be able to supervise their responsible network use, isn't it? (And the equity issue raised in above comments is on point, too.)
GAWD, SPS just shoots itself in the foot.
Especially when the district just created a procedure that says having access to personal e-mail IS going to help with academics?
-HS Parent
2) Many teachers have essentially required gmail accounts to upload documents to class google sites. Some teachers use Fusion for most of this (Fusion has its limits, but files can be uploaded by students, teachers can be messaged, etc., but with less functionality than a Google site).
3) Supposedly Seattle and other districts can offer email to students along with MS Office for free. I'm sure it's more complicated than the below link suggests (and there are several articles I've seen on this). Email with MS Office could be an incredible equity piece, but yes, somehow parents need to be involved (or at least aware/consent) with any student email. http://www.microsoft.com/education/ww/products/Pages/office365-for-Education.aspx
Next Tech
CT mentioned the fact that google got busted earlier this year for scanning email and other student communications through their Google Apps for Education, and brought up the subsequent policy improvements. However, the "improvements" were mostly BS. Read the updated policy very carefully (Apps for Education. Nowhere does it say that the scanning and data collection of student behavior and communications has been stopped. The new policy merely states that the scanning is not for the purpose of advertising, and that "advertising profiles" are not created. It doesn't state that user profiles are not created, and they almost certainly ARE created, along with other "shadow profiles", waiting for users to either create a google account or to become of legal age, at which time all the data can be married together to make extremely profitable profiles. This is a dirty industry with such a we-are-above-reproach attitude that they don't even know the difference between right and wrong anymore.
GenEd Mom, I seem to recall that your daughter is (or was) still in elementary school, right? If so, you should know that there are federal laws that legally prevent kids under the age of 13 from even applying to use services like gmail and googledocs without very specific steps taken by parent/guardians, such as having a credit card on file or photocopying your drivers license or passport and sending to google so they can keep on file. Google is very soon going to be pushing against the under-13 laws, and it will be very interesting to see how it all plays out.
If your teacher or school was coercing you and/or your daughter to use such services, they are putting themselves in a very dangerous position, legally. You do NOT have to use such (third party data mining) services in order to do participate in school. This should be grossly obvious, because not all kids even have internet access at home! Yes, parents may need to stand up and advocate strongly for their children in these matters, because most teachers don't have any clue about the technology, policies and laws.
By the time kids are in high school, it's a completely different story, but there is no reason whatsoever that an elementary teacher or staff member should ever, ever be pressuring students to use these (non-) "free" services.
If ANY school, even high schools, wants to push students to use online collaborative tools, then they should make district-managed tools and services available to the kids. Services that are freely available to ALL students, and services that are free from the relentless data mining of companies like Google, Facebook, Pearson, Fusion, and all the hundreds of other smaller players doing the same thing under the radar.
Gen Ed Mom
GEM
By disallowing internet use he would also not be able to use standardized testing as it is all internet based now. That must be why his kindergarten principal discouraged me from signing the opt out form kindergarten year when I was about to turn it in. This year I will.
School should be a safe place for youngsters to grow, not a place to ruin their online profiles. As many of us know, a clean online profile is needed for quality jobs and mobility within companies. We can't expect our youngsters to know this yet. My little one thinks bodily functions are really funny. This is completely age appropriate but completely dangerous on the internet.
I'll be signing the opt out form this year.
Opting out.
YOu said this:
"By disallowing internet use he would also not be able to use standardized testing as it is all internet based now."
That can't be true because I'm sure they want as many kids as possible to take the test. If it is true, then they have a real problem.
Opting out
In practice, most kids your kid know either are or soon will be engaging in all kinds of unfortunate things: drinking, experimenting with drugs, etc. That's not a good reason to help enable them down those paths.
That said, I understand there are different risk levels, and I totally understand about having to pick your battles. Until you've seen deleterious effects from a particular activity firsthand, it's hard to justify a big fight. I just want to make sure people are aware that these services are provided by data miners, and over time there are all kinds of bad things that can come from having every single thing you say and do online put into giant unregulated cross-referenced databases for analysis - especially when children are involved.
In the meantime, people like mirmac, myself, Melissa and others will continue to raise red flags in the hopes that we can get more people to pay attention. At the end of the day, nothing will change until enough people start caring enough to complain.
GEM
It is an interesting thing how so many people take what is said at face value. Or don't want to believe/imagine that anyone has motives other than what is said OR that anything can go wrong.
Dear JAMS Families-
With letters from Seattle Public Schools Transportation Department arriving last week, we have heard from a number of parents that their student either didn't receive bus service at all; their student has an unsafe walk route (no sidewalks, crosswalks, traffic lights); and/or the Metro routes from their home are very limited.
We take our students' safety very seriously and to that end, Principal Montgomery has outlined the following updates:
Families should email SPS Transportation and Transportation Manager Michelle Drorbaugh (medrorbaugh@seattleschools.org) directly with specific information for their child who lives in the 1.5-1.9 area (the area currently served by ORCA cards).
Michelle’s team is attempting to get these students spaces on nearby buses. We have heard that students are slowly getting spaces on yellow buses, so please be patient.
Assistant Superintendent McEvoy will come to JAMS the week after we meet on September 10 with City of Seattle in order to give updates, hear any ongoing issues, and discuss further next steps.
Please help us by following the recommended drop off areas as outlined in the attached traffic flow handout for the first few days of school. We have heard that quite a few families are going to drive kids to school and perhaps honk in protest. Please remember that at the school level we can only relay this information to the transportation department. We are working hard to address these systematic issues, but please let’s keep the first day of school as calm as we can.
In addition, the PTSA is working with the City of Seattle to update crosswalks under their Safe Routes to Schools Program as well as working on advocating with the school district to update transportation options for our students.
Principal Montgomery wants to thank families for all of their help on these issues and their willingness to work collaboratively and proactively for ALL of our students. It speaks volumes about the community of parents that is developing at Jane Addams Middle School.
The teachers and staff at JAMS are very excited to welcome your students to school on Wednesday.
(end of letter)____________________
NEmom
-patience please