Wilson County School leaders consider new social media guidelines

The Wilson County Schools Board of Education is considering proposals for a new district social media policy that would restrict district employees’ use of social media and interactions with students.

According to a policy draft provided by the district at Thursday’s regular board meeting, the district would “strongly discourage” employees from socializing with students on social networking websites. It added that the content of social networking sites shall be the responsibility of the department head or principal and the employee. 

“The same relationship, exchange, interaction, information, or behavior that would be unacceptable in a non-technological medium is unacceptable when done through the use of technology.  Employees are strongly discouraged from including current students as friends,’ ‘followers,’ or any other similar terminology used by various sites without written permission from the student’s parent,” the document read, adding that “networking sites representing individual departments, schools, or employees must be approved by the department head and/or principal.”

The new proposals sparked some disagreement among board members at Thursday’s meeting.

Board member Melissa Lynn said that while some of the guidelines could be difficult to enforce, she particularly agrees with rules that prohibit teachers and district employees from being friends with students on social media.

“I totally agree with that. I never would be friends with students [as an educator]. Actually, I wouldn’t even be friends with parents until after those students have left my classroom,” she said. “I just worry about some of the things that we want to initiate in this. And as far as the administrators, they have too much to do to police social media pages.”

Board member Jamie Farough, however, said she believes it should be acceptable for teachers and students to interact on social media in some cases, adding that “we have to stop treating teachers like they’re not part of our community.”

WCS board member Jamie Farough speaks about district social media rules at Thursday’s Board of Education meeting. (Screenshot)

She said that she is also against stipulations that prohibit teachers from talking about certain things that happen on campuses, which could make it difficult for parent-teacher organizations to have discussions about district happenings.

“I know that there are teachers in my church who have been friends with my kids long before they were ever my kids’ teachers. It’s not that [my children’s] teachers just went and added them on Facebook or something like that, but they’ve been part of my children’s lives long before they were their teachers,” she said. “There’s lots of consequences of this as written that I see as unintended consequences, but I fully believe we need a social media policy.”

Board member Greg Hohman said he would like to see more guidelines addressing cyberbullying online between students within the district’s social media policy.

“I think that should be more clarified in this too, because we want to have a healthy environment and we don’t want [social media] to be a platform for people to tear each other apart and tear the community apart,” he said.

According to Wilson County Schools Public Information Officer Bart Barker, the board will likely revisit discussions about its social media policy at another upcoming board meeting.