School Districts Must Adopt Teacher-student Communication Policy

Earlier this week, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon signed into law a bill that will require all Missouri school districts to adopt a written policy concerning employee- and teacher-student communication.

According to the law, every school district shall, by January 1, 2012, create a written policy concerning teacher-student communication and employee-student communication. Such policy shall contain at least the following elements:

- Appropriate oral and nonverbal personal communication, which may be combined with or included in any policy on sexual harassment;
- Appropriate use of electronic media such as text messaging and internet sites for both instructional and personal purposes, with an element concerning use of social networking sites no less stringent than:
* No teacher shall establish, maintain, or use a work-related internet site unless such site is available to school administrators and the child's legal custodian, physical custodian, or legal guardian;
* No teacher shall establish, maintain, or use a nonwork-related internet site which allows exclusive access with a current or former student (It DOES NOT prohibit a teacher from establishing a nonwork related internet site, provided the site is used in accordance with this section.);
- Every school district shall, by July 1, 2012, include in its teacher and employee training, a component that provides up-to-date and reliable information on identifying signs of sexual abuse in children and danger signals of potentially abusive relationships between children and adults.

Worth noting are some legal definitions outlined in the actual bill:

"Exclusive access" is defined as the information on a website that is available only to the owner (teacher) and user (student) by mutual explicit consent and where third parties have no access to the information on the website absent an explicit consent agreement with the owner (teacher);

"Former student" is defined as an any person who was at one time a student at the school at which the teacher is employed and who is eighteen years of age or less and who has not graduated;

"Nonwork-related internet site", any internet website or web page used by a teacher primarily for personal purposes and not for educational purposes;

"Work-related internet site", any internet website or web pages used by a teacher for educational purposes.

This law does not ban, nor prohibit, teachers from using social networking and/or social media websites. It also does not declare that employee- or teacher-student communication is illegal. This law does however, require school districts to adopt a policy that frames employee- and teacher-student communication, adhering to the new legal requirements.