In an age of ubiquitous social media outlets and total privacy becoming a thing of the past, how school districts collect and store students’ social media entries has come under scrutiny by a Los Angeles state lawmaker.
Assembly Bill 1442 would ensure that parents are informed when their children’s Tweets, Facebook and Instagram postings are being monitored by school districts and for what purposes.
“When taxpayer dollars are being used by a government agency, such as a school district, to monitor what is going on outside the classroom, parents and students have a right to know what that data is being used for and how long it will be stored,” Assemblyman Michael Gatto (D- Los Angeles), the author of AB 1442, said. “Imagine the harm that could be caused if a hacker, mean-spirited employee, or even a careless [information technology] worker were to expose a database of all of the things a person said or did as a teenager.”
Culver City Unified School District Board of Education member Katherine Paspalis sees AB 1442 as “an attempt to address privacy concerns in the face of ever new opportunities to inadvertently destroy privacy given the new media and technology of the 21st century. We’ll see how or if it works in practice if this bill becomes law.”
CCUSD Superintendent David LaRose said the legislation would not affect Culver City. “We do not store, collect or monitor students’ social media data/postings, as student devices are not connected to our network,” LaRose told the News.
Paspalis, the mother of two high school students, said having school districts monitoring a student’s social media activities in some cases could be questionable.
“I think that that are plenty of instances where a school district should not and would not be gathering this data in the first place, so I can certainly imagine justifiable instances where a school district should not keep this data,” she said.
