SWAMPSCOTT ― For the first time in more than a decade, the School Committee is updating its social-media policies for teachers.
On Friday, teachers from Swampscott’s elementary, middle, and high schools met with Lytania Mackey Knowles, the director of technology, digital learning, and innovation for the district; Suzanne Wright, the vice chair of the school committee; and John Giantis, a school committee member to address the antiquated system.
Between COVID-19 bringing students into teachers’ homes via virtual classes and online debates about the new elementary school project in town, Knowles and Wright said that teachers need guidelines to show them what is appropriate for professional online profiles.
“I think this policy is from 2008 or 2009, because it keeps mentioning e-communications,” Knowles said.
Knowles said a subcommittee had voted to keep the same policy without any updates for years. In 2018, Knowles and Wright said the policy needed to be updated, but the pandemic delayed any revisions.
Right now, the policy doesn’t address social-media platforms like Snapchat or Instagram, nor does it touch upon Facebook stories or other forms of posts that seem to disappear after a few seconds or 24 hours. The policy also states that teachers cannot be friends on social media with their students. The subcommittee offered little detail on what they plan to update in the policy.
“We need to be looking at protecting everyone,” Knowles said.
Rebecca Bucklin, a teacher at Hadley School, said that it’s hard for teachers in Swampscott to juggle using personal and professional identities when discussing the new elementary school project, which is going to a town vote on Oct. 19. The project would build one elementary school to replace the three current elementary schools ― Hadley, Clarke, and Stanley ― each of which have an average age of 90 years.
Bucklin said one of her fellow teachers, whom she did not identify, posted an infographic on Facebook about the new school and was flooded with hateful comments from citizens against the project. Bucklin said many teachers took to social media to defend the teacher.
“We are, right now, putting our personal and professional identities on social media,” Bucklin said. “There is no clear distinction between our personal and professional identity because it’s seen as both.”
The current policy also does not take into account certain aspects that come with living in a small town, said Bucklin. She said she knows teachers who live in town and whose children attend Swampscott public school; oftentimes they will all share one carpool.
“When you live in a three-square-mile town, how do you separate everything?” Bucklin said. “So many things are in shades of gray because of how small (the town) is.”
Wright said that updating the policy is necessary, and she wants to write something that is specialized to the town, not just copied from a state mandate. She said the main role of the policy is to remind staff that they always represent Swampscott’s schools, even online.
“This is about how you’re portraying yourself and the district online and reminding people there is no such thing as privacy,” she said.
Katelyn Sahagian can be reached at [email protected]