The Children's Internet Protection Act was enacted in 2000 by Congress to require schools and some other entities to filter objectionable material from classrooms and other settings designed for children. While the definition of "objectionable" can get sticky, there are many things that are quite clear and our schools must have every protection we can provide. Such things include pornography, obscene materials, hate groups and illicit activities. LPS has long maintained a two-pronged approach to provide the best shield we can for our students.
First, we have a filtering system that processes all Internet requests and compares them to a database of web addresses. A company manages this database constantly adding addresses and categorizing them to enable filtering selections. Our former supplier was Bess but this summer we migrated to 8e6 Technologies. Such systems are very dynamic and have incredibly large records of web material which can be filtered. Second, we have an acceptable use policy built into our code of conduct and into our employment commitments. Between the filtering system and responsible people, we try to keep our utilization of Internet to the best purposes.
It should be noted that Internet filtering was not born of CIPA. In fact, Internet filtering is a private-sector application intended to keep employees from going to inappropriate sites or participating in time-wasting activities online. As such, categories for filtering can include shopping, gaming and social networking... which can't be called truly objectionable or obscene except in special cases. These are categories that fall into the "unproductive" class for business and become a point of debate in education circles. This is where we look to the statement that use of the Internet needs to be in support of the mission of the district.
Naturally, some objectionable sites will be missed and we'll block them as soon as we become aware of them. In other cases, sites that a teacher can effectively use in the classroom or use for other professional practices get blocked. To get such sites unblocked, staff have always had (as provided by law in CIPA) the right to get an override either from a Computer Coach at school or by requesting the Filtering Committee to review the site and modify the filter settings.
Today, our new system provides another option. Teachers can temporarily override many blocked sites with their own login credentials. As such, if a teacher were to find a web site that is useful only to find it blocked at school, the teacher has the ability to override that block and gain access to the materials.
There are limits to this override capacity. Anything classified in the obviously objectionable categories cannot be overridden by staff logins. Certainly all forms of pornography and obscene material are still blocked even if an override login is attempted. Where this override ability has effect is in that very wide grey area that is always subject to debate. It is here where teachers and principals are expected to apply their professional judgment for the betterment of the learners in their care. Of course, the overrides are recorded and are auditable so we can deal with misuse. But the bottom line is our teachers now have the kind of control to online resources that were called for in the Children's Internet Protection Act.
Also for the techies in the audience, our new system does not require a proxy server setting to be in place. The former system required a special setting to be made in the Internet Explorer web browser and without that setting, the Internet was not available. The new system does not require that setting making setup faster and more efficient. We have maintained the proxy servers in place to allow the computers with the old settings to continue to function without having to be rebuilt and we'll keep these servers in place for at least another year.
See district policies
JS: Student Use of the Internet
EGAEA: Electronic Mail and Internet Services
GBEE: Staff use of District Technology