Skip to main content

Personal Device and Personal Accounts

 

We have received some recent guidance regarding personal cell phone use from Matt Carver, Legal Council for School Administrators of Iowa that we felt would be beneficial to pass along to you. LINK TO ARTICLE (NOTE ARTICLE IS ON PAGE 4). Please know that although this article is directed toward school administrators, it applies to ALL school employees. 

One key point that I want to reiterate is this paragraph below: 

"Does this mean that all communications between school employees or representatives are subject to public records requests? NO. Again, consider if the communication is about official business. If the communication does not relate to the employee or board member carrying out their official duties or making a decision about the school district, a student, or another employee, then it is unlikely the communication is subject to a request. Remember that public employees have constitutionally protected rights to speak on matters of public concern in their personal lives. As an example, if a couple of employees are bantering back and forth on Messenger about an upcoming bond referendum, they may do so without concern that such messages would be subject to a public records request."


Now, one important item to consider, if you are talking about official school business with another staff member via text message or other platform, this could be subject to a public records request. Example, you are texting with a paraprofessional about a student and their behavior in class... the text messages COULD be subject to a public records request. That doesn't mean that just anyone can view your text messages, however it does mean that a parent or other representative COULD request that information via a public records request. 


Another important item to consider.. Communication and other things done on your school provided email or school provided device (including text messages linked to your Messaging app on the teacher MacBooks) ARE public record, so please be advised that those tools are provided for school business and basic personal usage, however, the right of confidentiality should not be assumed. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Passwords - oh passwords!

 We just recently sent this message to our staff:  Greetings! In our continuing efforts to create a more technology secure environment, we are going to begin to enforce the following rules for STAFF passwords in Google. All passwords must be a minimum length of 12 characters. We recommend passwords that are passphrases, for example “ilovechipsandsalsa”. While we are enforcing a password length requirement, at this time we are not requiring complexity through special characters, or symbols, or upper case letters. All staff will be required to create a new password every 180 days. We will begin enforcing these policies on Wednesday November 16th. When you log into your Google account, you will be prompted to update your password. A few other items regarding this change. Infinite Campus passwords will not be affected. Teacher MacBook logins, office staff’s windows logins, any business office/HR logins, or other website logins will not be affected. Para tablets, chromebooks, or ot...
Post a Comment
Read more

Campus update

  We get new updates to Infinite Campus every couple of weeks. One of the newest updates now checks your password against known data breaches. If you password is one that is compromised, you'll get a notification like this when signing into Campus:  In order to change your Campus password, you need to go to Account Settings in Campus Tools and select Edit your password. 
Post a Comment
Read more

When I leave the district - Using Google Takeout

  I actually took this picture myself at a lake my family visits each summer.. quite the sunset! Any who, this post is targeted at folks who are planning to leave the district , whether that be due to retirement or another opportunity.  When you leave our district, we suspend your Google account. This usually happens after our last teacher contract day or when we are notified of you leaving the district over the summer. When the account is suspended, other users will be able to access all shared documents with your account as normal. One year after the account is suspended, the account is then deleted. Then all documents will be deleted that the user owned. Other users will no longer be able to access those shared documents and they will be gone forever. Please make sure you move any needed content to a Shared Drive that your team will need in the future. Please see this POST on how to do that.  If you want to copy any or all of your "content" "see Google docs and email...
Post a Comment
Read more