Communication Expectations

Recommendations for Staff, Students, and the Community

Email

Email is a valuable communication tool that is widely used. As such, staff, parents/legal guardians, students, and other members of the general school community are encouraged to use email to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of communication. Because not every parent/legal guardian has access to email, staff members cannot make it the only option for communicating with parents/legal guardians. Similarly, neither a student nor a parent/legal guardian may demand that a staff member correspond via email.

Representatives of WCPS using email to correspond will adhere to the following expectations:

1. The staff members should respond or acknowledge receipt to student and parent(s)/legal guardian(s) in a timely manner.
2. Staff and students should use only WCPS-provided accounts to receive or send email and not use personal email accounts for professional correspondence.
3. WCPS has the right and responsibility to access and disclose the contents of all email messages as required for legal, audit, and legitimate operational purposes.
4. Users are responsible for all email sent from their accounts; they should take care to protect access to the account by keeping their password secret.
5. Messages should be consistent with professional practices for other correspondence, including grammar, punctuation, and formatting.
6. Careful consideration should be used when discussing contentious, emotional, or confidential issues via email.

Web Pages

Websites must comply with these expectations and all other relevant Washington County Board of Education (WCBOE) policies. Failure to do so could result in the loss of website privileges. The Chief Communications Officer or designee can revoke website privileges for web pages that do not meet these expectations:

1. Schools, departments, and divisions of WCPS are encouraged to participate in publishing student and community-focused information on the web. School-related groups should work with their schools to publish information on the schools’ custom web pages or have a link off these pages to their own website.
2. The school principal or program administrator of a participating group shall designate at least one WCPS employee in the participating group as the website manager or content contributor.
3. Website managers and content contributors must ensure the content on their sites follow these expectations and all relevant BOE policies.
4. Contents must be school, curriculum, or school system-related.
5. All copyright laws and regulations must be followed. Written permission for the use of copyright material used on a website must be obtained and kept on file by the website manager or content contributor.
6. Personally identifiable information of students and staff shall NOT be published on any publicly accessible system/school website (FERPA).
7. WCPS employees’ full name and WCPS email is considered public information and may be posted on the web page.
8. Personal pages of students or teachers will NOT be posted on, or have links from, WCPS websites.
9. No advertisements for or from private businesses are allowed on school system websites. Acknowledgement of sponsors for school or system events with links to a sponsor’s web page is permissible.
10. Links to external sites should be tested prior to publishing on a web page to ensure the pages are active and they do not lead to areas that are inappropriate for K-12 school environments. These external links should be tested at least quarterly. For information, call 301-766-2809 or email info@wcps.k12.md.us.

Social Media

The responsible use of social media can promote exceptional teaching, learning, and community interaction when used appropriately and in a professional manner. WCPS has crafted Policy GBEE and Administrative Regulation GBEE-R to clarify the use of social media. In professional and instructional roles, employees and students need to follow the same behavioral standards online as they would in real life. The same laws, professional expectations, and guidelines for interacting with students, parents/legal guardians, alumni, general public, media, and other WCPS constituents apply online as in the real world. The following are the expectations for communications via social media:

1. Employees and students should familiarize themselves with the aforementioned policy and regulation regarding the use of social media.
2. Personally identifiable information of students and staff shall NOT be published on any social media site (FERPA).
3. Respect copyright and fair use laws.
4. Any use of the WCPS logo or any other school system images or iconography must be approved by school system administration.
5. The use of WCPS’ name to promote a product, cause, or political party or candidate is prohibited.
6. Understand that content contributed to a social media site could encourage comments or discussion of opposing ideas. Responses should be considered carefully in light of how they would reflect on the person posting the content and/or WCPS and its respective schools.
7. Ensure the accuracy of any posted facts and credit sources prior to posting them on social media. Review content for grammatical and spelling errors.
8. Prior to posting photographs, consult the Student Health/Family Information Form for parental permission to post student images, interviews, videos, student-generated work or when publishing names.
9. When posting on behalf of a WCPS school or department on a social media platform, state your name and position.