Santa Clarita Valley Officials Respond To Recent Social Media Privacy Bill For Students
A bill looking at students’ privacy in school with respect to their social media activity passed the state Legislature recently, and is now on the governor’s desk.
AB 1442 would require that parents be notified of a district’s information-collection policies, that students be given the opportunity to examine information collected about them and that any such information be destroyed within one year of a student turning 18 or leaving the district.
Don’t miss a thing. Get breaking Santa Clarita news alerts delivered right to your inbox.
Several Santa Clarita Valley education officials said students’ social media information is not generally tracked. However, the bill was created in response to concerns about Glendale Unified.
Glendale Unified School District renewed a contract with a social-media-monitoring company in mid-August.
“The district hired Geo Listening to analyze what students post on sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and look for evidence of cyberbullying, crime, drug-use and suicidal thoughts,” according to the Glendale News Press.
Saugus Union School District officials said, for security reasons, they could retrieve a student’s social media activity if an incident was brought to their attention.
“We don’t do any tracking of any sort or regular monitoring of social media or student’s access to social media,” said Chad Hammitt, the Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources for the Saugus Union School District.
College of the Canyons officials do not catalog or track their students’ social media accounts.
“We do not track student’s social media activity, and we have no access to their private accounts,” said Wendy Trujillo from College of the Canyon’s public information office.
The Hart district does not contract with any companies to track any students’ social media activity, according to Gail Pinsker, district spokeswoman.
Do you have a news tip? Call us at (661) 298-1220, or drop us a line at community@hometownstation.com.
After finding out about the Glendale Unified School District’s decision, Gatto applauded their decision to inform parents of their intentions, and reasons behind their decision to track students.
“Social-media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have staked concerns from parents about how to protect the privacy of their children,” said a news release from Gatto.
“AB 1442 would create reasonable standards of privacy when school districts collect and analyze (or contract with a third-party entity to collect and analyze) data that students post to social-media websites,” his statement read.
[node:title]
Article: [node:title]
Source: Santa Clarita News
Author: [node:author]