Board holds public hearing to satisfy Children's Internet Protection Act requirement

Pelham City Schools staff informed the board on Sept. 29 that the district met the three requirements of the federal Children's Internet Protection Act for receiving certain federal funding: an Internet-safety policy, technology protection measures and a public hearing.

Eric Waddell, district technology/staff presenter, explained the school's approach and said the public hearing being held that evening satisfied CIPA's public-notice requirement. "CIPA requires 3 things," Waddell told the board, listing an Internet-safety policy, technology protection measures and a public hearing. "The third thing that CIPA requires is that we hold a public hearing, which is what we're doing right now."

Waddell described the district's multilayered protections: a board policy in the manual that includes student and staff acceptable-use rules, on-campus firewall content filtering, a web-based content filter for off-campus access and classroom monitoring software that teachers may use during the school day. He clarified that teachers "are not allowed to monitor students outside of the school day," but may monitor student activity while students are on campus.

Waddell emphasized the district's primary goal is to prevent access to "harmful materials" for students and said the measures range from blocking explicit content to restricting social media as appropriate for school settings. He offered to meet individually with board members to discuss technical details.

Because the district described its current policy and filtering measures during the public hearing, staff stated the district met CIPA's conditions for federal funding eligibility; no formal board vote on the policy was recorded in the transcript during this segment.