This is Superintendent Dave Harmon with an important bit of information that is required to be shared to you by the passage of and coming implementation of Senate Bill 29.
Senate Bill 29 requires all schools in Ohio to provide notice to parents and caregivers of our students about protective monitoring of school-owned devices.
It is not a new thing that our schools, or most schools for that matter, have been monitoring school-owned devices for many years. In Versailles, this has been in place for more than 10 years. It is actually a requirement, and you’ll understand why very shortly here. Any school that participates in E-Rate and other federal funding programs are required to monitor internet traffic on school-owned devices as a part of the Child Internet Protection Act (CIPA). That makes sense. There are lots of would be evil-doers out in the world. Schools need to do what they can to protect children from inappropriate sites, would-be scammers, and any number of other types of individuals who might have ill intentions for the students, or the school district as a whole. Our filters also can pick up on particular language that might be used, so these systems are also monitoring for language that might indicate that a student is threatening others, threats against the school, or any potential expressions of self-harm.
Again, this isn’t new. What IS new, is the requirement via Senate Bill 29 that we expressly tell you that we are doing so. We’ve been required to monitor for a long time. Further, this action falls in line with long-standing Board Policy to ensure internet safety that includes technology protection measures to block or filter Internet access to pictures that are obscene etc.
The Versailles Exempted Village School District monitors devices with software called “Go Guardian” as well as “Blocksi.”
Should something of concern be detected in this monitoring process, with the passage of SB29 there are rules that will soon be effective for how quickly we need to reach out to parents to let them know whatever we may have been alerted to. It all makes good sense for keeping our children safe. It’s not really different from what we’ve ever done. But we’re required, as are all schools, to inform you of this process due to the passage of SB29.
Thank you very much. We are so proud to work with your children every single day.
Go Tigers!