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Electronic Communication

The growth of the personal computer industry and the Internet has ushered in an “information age,” characterized by individual empowerment and the flattening of geographical and temporal barriers to communication and collaboration. The same technological revolutions that have transformed global society also have impacted how schools and districts operate. While the digitization of school communications has enabled a number of new possibilities for educators, it also has raised a number of legal and policy concerns, which are discussed in this entry.

Monitoring Communications

Electronic school communication can take many forms. School e-mail and instant-messaging systems, local area networks, Web sites, course management systems, and parent portals are just a few examples of the many types of school-sponsored systems that facilitate educators' communication with internal or external audiences. Teachers and administrators may also utilize outside, non-school-sponsored services, such as search engines, blogs, wikis, online video sites, and online office software suites, to access or share information and to communicate with students, parents, or other educators.

A number of school systems allow Web site visitors to download text, graphic, audio, video, or other types of files, including policy documents, instructions for outside vendors, parent newsletters, and examples of student work. Digital communications also occur between school-owned mobile devices, such as wireless radios, cell phones, and Global Positioning Systems (GPS).

One issue raised by this explosion of communication options is the ability of school officials to engage in effectively monitoring the vast array of mechanisms that educators have to communicate with each other and with institutional stakeholders. To this end, school officials have at least some obligation to monitor employee and student use of technology tools when those tools are used for professional or instructional purposes.

School organizations that disregard their supervisory responsibilities may face the legal and public relations ramifications of ignoring potential employee or student abuse of digital technologies. No school system wants to be sued or highlighted in the global news because it wasn't effectively safeguarding its electronic communication channels or online environments from sexual harassment, cyberbullying, or exposure to age-inappropriate content. However, preventing or regulating employee usage of electronic communication tools is extremely difficult.

Keeping Records

A second concern that accompanies use of electronic communications is whether they fall under the legal definition of educational records. Federal and state laws, as well as school and board policies, typically define what types of information are considered to be formal educational records for purposes of the law. Those definitions typically are based on the document content rather than the form. This means that an individual e-mail, wiki page, or word processing document, for example, may or may not be an educational record for legal compliance purposes, depending on its content.

Files that are determined to be educational records must comply with all document retention and legal discovery rules. Recent changes in the federal rules of civil procedure emphasize that institutions must have clear polices regarding data storage, data access, and timelines for data deletion. School-related electronic communications fall under these requirements.

Further, electronic communications that are considered to be educational records must comply with federal and state data confidentiality requirements and state laws regarding openness of public records. Balancing confidentiality against openness can be extremely difficult when it comes to digital records, particularly given the relative ease with which digital files can be further distributed. For instance, an employee who receives a “confidential” instant message from another can easily forward all or part of that message on to another employee or to the world at large.

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