AL Schools Curb Teacher Internet Use

By Meg McCaffrey -- School Library Journal, 2/1/2005

Visit eBay on company time, and you risk getting the boot. That's the policy in Alabama's Limestone County school district.

School district officials recently required employees to sign a contract that restricts Internet use, after reportedly discovering staffers paying personal bills online and visiting noneducational Web sites. Officials stumbled onto this after the server crashed last August, resulting in drastic changes in the district's Internet-usage policy.

Wary of another crash, as well as inappropriate Internet usage, the school board approved a tech-usage policy with several options. In December 2004, employees were asked to choose no access, filtered access, or limited Internet access, which requires that certain Web sites be unblocked by the technology staff. The last option is the one that students were dealt.

Violating technology-use contracts can lead to the loss of a job, suspension, or denied access. "Some [employees] are afraid of wandering on to an inappropriate site and getting fired," says Madolyn Whitt, a media specialist at Elkmont High School. "Instead of taking the matter up with the guilty party, the whole district is being punished."

Before the new policy was enacted, employees had unlimited Internet access. Now, it's harder for librarians to do their jobs. "It doesn't leave room for spontaneous teaching," says Susan Kluger, a librarian at Cedar Hill Elementary School, who finds it's tougher to teach K–5 students about safe sites. Anita Carpenter, a librarian at Tanner High School, says students surf the Web more at home or at public libraries. But not all students have Internet access at home.

Meanwhile, students and teachers are often forced to wait until helpful sites are unblocked. Whitt says she hopes district officials will reconsider the policy, adding that educators also use eBay and Amazon.com to purchase school items. But the district shows no sign of budging. "I think this is here to stay," says Carpenter, a librarian for 23 years.

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