Texting and Facebook friendships between students and teachers may soon be banned in Arlington County. The school district is drafting a new policy for preventing sexual misconduct and abuse, designed to keep up with state guidelines issued earlier this year. But school board members sent their staff back to the drawing board last week, worried that the draft rules would prevent normal relationships between students and teachers. The draft would not allow teachers to text students using their personal phones or to interact with them on social networks.
Vice Chairman Emma Violand Sanchez said she often texts the students she mentors to ask such things as, “When are you coming to the office?”
“[These rules] could have a chilling effect on what we need to do with students,” she said.
Since the school does not issue county-owned phones to teachers, it would essentially be a ban on texting, she said.
Board members said they were also concerned about the draft’s rule that would discourage teachers from sharing personal information with students both in and out of the classroom. Sharing some personal information is normal and should be encouraged, Chairman Abby Raphael said, adding that the current draft makes it sound like telling students about a love for baseball would be against the rules for teachers.
“[The policy] shouldn’t go farther than what we intend,” she said.
She also called for definitions of “sexual misconduct” and “abuse” to be included in the rules.
Arlington’s policy comes in the wake of new, revised guidelines issued by the state board of education in March. The state’s original rules released in January were too strict, preventing normal relationships with students, board members said. The original state guidelines would have banned social network interactions, texting and all one-on-one interactions between teachers and students, even counseling sessions. Though the final guidelines issued by the state gave school districts much more freedom, Arlington board members said they wanted to be cautious about sexual abuse while ensuring the county rules didn’t fall into the same trap as the January guidelines.
The state and local policies are designed to hamper the schemes of teachers like Kevin Ricks, who preyed on Manassas students via Facebook before being arrested for sexual abuse in 2010. Ricks was sentenced to 25 years in prison in May.
Arlington school officials will seek input about the draft policy from students and parents over the summer, then present the board with a revised version of the policy in August, Assistant Superintendent Linda Erdos said.
Alexandria and Fairfax school districts said they didn’t plan to update their sexual abuse policies anytime soon, despite the new state guidelines, saying their current policies were adequate.
“We do not have plans to make changes. There was discussion here with the superintendent and others when those guidelines came out that they were extremely restrictive to teachers being able to build real relationships with kids,” Alexandria spokeswoman Sandy Hudnall said.
