School Committee supports MySpace controls

During the School Committee meeting last night, the members took the opportunity to have Superintendent Elaine Espindle explain what the schools do to limit access to MySpace and other websites that are innappropriate for use in a school environment, and then voted to support the implimentation of such safety features at the town library.

Espindle was asked to explain the schools use a filtering product that filters based on a number of topics (she listed a number including gambling, pornography, and chat sites).

Espindle also noted a number of assemblies that are being held with students to discuss internet issues (bullying, myspace, online predators..) and that we had already had a meeting with parents on this issue. She noted that Dracut was years ahead of other towns in terms of filtering the use of the internet in schools.

Later during the meeting, Committee Member DJ Deeb put forth a recommendation that the School Committee vote to support the Board of Selectmen on the issue of adding filtering to the town library to eliminate the social networking websites.

After a bit of discussion, they voted in favor.. but it was difficult to understand what they voted in favor of. They said that they wanted to support “them” and offer to help by showing how the school system’s filter system works.

Deeb started the discussion by joking “I’m in favor of censorship,” but member Nancy Mendonca was quick to correct him, saying that the issue is safety.

Joe Campbell, a long time member of the committee, emphasized that the school committee was only talking about controlling access by children (I guess you gotta wonder whether we should allow field trips to the town library…).

Ultimately, after a long discussion, they voted in favor of supporting someone.. I assume the Selectmen, in their effort to eliminate this service from the library.

Attached is a video pod containing both the presentation made by Elaine Espindle on what the schools do to control access, as well as the discussion about supporting the town’s effort to improve child safety at the library.

 

 School Committee discusses MySpace at Library [10:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download