Schools to start Web block

Oct. 17, 2006

By Michael Rovito

Frontiersman

PALMER - In response to what officials call an abundance of students accessing weapons and pornography sites during the school day, the Mat-Su School District will implement new restrictions on student Internet use starting Oct. 20.

Under the new policy, principals in each school, along with a core group of teachers who build curriculum, will decide which Internet sites are necessary and appropriate for research and learning, said Marie Burton, director of management information services for the district.

All other sites will be blocked.

&#8220We don't have enough people or money to police the Internet,” Burton said. &#8220We have students getting into inappropriate things from weapons to pornography.”

Burton added that she would like the principal of each school to be the gatekeeper, and monitor the sites needed.

The decision to mandate restrictions of the Internet came about after tech-savvy students began bypassing the school's Internet filters and Web proxies. Filters that catch and restrict sites deemed inappropriate by the school are easily defeated by high school students, Burton said.

Traci Crotteau, the district's public information officer, said students are able to access their home Internet connection from computers at school, which enables them to go around firewalls and filters. And students aren't just briefly visiting sites during class time. Surfing the 'Net for some has become an all-day affair.

&#8220At Palmer High School, a student was logged into the Internet on MTV for eight hours during a two-week period during school,” Crotteau said.

Other sites commonly accessed by students who are tracked by the district's MIS department are the popular social Web site Myspace.com and, more disturbingly, bomb-making and weapons sites.

School officials can track individual students' Internet use since each student signs in with an ID number. But as Crotteau points out, there are 16,000 students in the district, and it is impossible to catch them all.

This new system is long overdue, Palmer High School principal Wolfgang Winter said.

Winter pointed out that although schools punish students who access adult and other inappropriate sites, the damage already has been done before punishment is handed down.

&#8220I'm fully in support of it,” Winter said, adding that there will be some inconvenience, but the end result will be worth the added work.

For a Web site to be unblocked for class use, teachers must submit the site's URL to their principal well before the lesson is to take place. After the principal reviews the site and OKs it, MIS will be notified and the block will be removed in a day or two, Winter said.

This means more planning on the part of teachers, who will find it impossible to unlock a site if it is requested the day of the lesson. However, Winter said, in the end, the new policy will protect Mat-Su students.

Contact Michael Rovito at 352-2252 or michael.rovito@

frontiersman.com.