Schools: Control or communicate?

The article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin leads with two examples of high school students videoing and posting fights on YouTube.com. But the story's about a deeper question schools are grappling with in the face of something school administrators admit they don't fully understand: how to deal with out-of-school online behavior that can affect school safety. "Critics say [social-networking] sites are a superhighway for spreading harmful content and bad blood much faster and wider than word-of-mouth, and that Department of Education security policies haven't kept up," according to the Star-Bulletin. It says one school board member in Honolulu is interested in a term used in a proposed school-safety policy in Utah: "substantial disruption." The policy would allow schools "to react to off-campus situations earlier, especially if they cause 'substantial disruption' to school operations or infringe on student or staff rights." A private school in the Honolulu area that "has had its share of cyber-situations" told the Star-Bulleting that school-parent-student communication is key – "acting quickly to show students and parents the harm caused has shown good results." And here's a story at Chicago's NBC5.com about how a suburban school district in Illinois is "considering new rules that would make students more accountable for what they post on sites like MySpace.com.... School officials said [the rules are] more about prevention than punishment, and what they hope to do is open the lines of communicating between the parent and the student."