Permission Required for Students to Record on School Grounds

The Board of Education voted unanimously Monday night to approve changes to the district’s communication devices policy, requiring permission from all students, teachers and parents before any recording devices are used on school property.

Board president Steve Barna explained after the meeting that the policy change was enacted as a result of the suicide of in September 2010. He said it is designed to insert privacy protections for students and prevent similar situations from occurring in Chatham.

Despite the unanimous vote for changes to the policy, there was still some concern raised as to its restrictiveness and lawfulness.

Board member Alan Routh, who had expressed concerns about the policy change when it was first brought up at the board’s Feb. 28 meeting, echoed similar sentiments before voting.

“I will say most of this policy is not required by law,” Routh said. “Given that the policy is a bit restrictive, we may find that we need to modify the policy. So, at any time the administration feels like the policy doesn’t work anymore, we can bring it back and change that.”

Assistant superintendent Michael LaSusa said the major concern about this policy, as it was sent to the district by Strauss Esmay, was that it would prohibit students from making recordings of legitimate classroom activities and projects.

“But the attorney we spoke with was pretty adamant that we keep that language in the policy,” LaSusa said. “And then it would be up to us to construct some avenues for gaining permission from parents.”

One such avenue LaSusa mentioned that might help to avoid the policy from becoming problematic is getting parents to sign permission forms before the school year starts. He said the district already does something similar by requesting permission from parents in the beginning of the summer to allow their children’s images to be posted on the website or other promotional materials.

Routh conceded that, although he still thinks implementing this policy will be a challenge, this might help to avoid some of the red tape.

“It sounds rather Draconian to require permission to take photographs in any school,” Routh said, “so if we work around that by getting permissions ahead of time, maybe it works.”

LaSusa previously stated that the original language of the policy had banned students from being However, since this would have meant students couldn’t even be in possession of a cell phone on school grounds, which he said would have been “unrealistic,” this language was removed.