What your children need to know about privacy in public schools.

Commentary: Teach your children well.

"Last night I read the complaint in the ACLU’s lawsuit against Minnwaska Area Schools. It left me absolutely livid that a public school district – once again – decided that it could discipline students in school for non-threatening off-campus speech. But the district’s egregious conduct did not stop there, it seems. District personnel allegedly also demanded the middle school student’s Facebook login and e-mail login and searched her e-mails and non-public Facebook activity and then disciplined her for that, too.

How can we tell parents to teach their children to respect their own privacy when schools violate it repeatedly – and violate our children’s constitutional rights in the bargain?

When my children were young, I taught them about their constitutional rights. Yes, we actually had conversations at our dinner table about the Bill of Rights and what it meant to them. And they knew not to just suffer invasions of their rights – or attempted invasion of their rights – in silence. 

And so, one day, my daughter came home and told me what an administrator had done and said when she tried to exercise her First Amendment rights. ”Was I wrong, Mom?” she asked me, because she was furious and embarrassed by how she had been publicly chastised and criticized by the administrator. “No, you weren’t wrong,” I told her. ”The administrator was.” And so I called our local chapter of the ACLU and spoke with them about the incident. They kindly offered to represent my daughter should we wish to pursue the issue. In this case, I decided to forego a litigation approach in lieu of another approach that demanded that the District mend its ways and respect the First Amendment. The District, having been sued by me in the past over other civil rights violations, knew I would follow through if they didn’t.

But the incident scarred my daughter. She was embarrassed in front of her peers, and she never again felt safe in that school to engage in protected speech."

Read more... http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=27533

ACLU Handbook - Social Networking, Your Privacy Rights Explained.
http://www.aclu-mn.org/index.php/download_file/view/305/