Paywalled for me (and I don’t recall ever reading a story from the KC Star, so I doubt that I’ve used up my freebies). Got a summary, or perhaps a different source?
Between all the delays and the Principal putting this line in a statement:
Some students have approached me with information about who has been looking at these things. I told them to write in a note for me what they know, and I will look over the information.
I think it’s pretty clear they were looking to blame this on a student from the get go.
So, what aren’t they telling us? When they got the first, or even the second email, it would have been a much better idea to fix the filter and contact all the parents with an explanation and apology. So why did they drag it out so long? Why is the principal trying to get the kids to rat out their friends, in writing.
The only thing I can think of is that someway, somehow, it’s going to track back to him. Maybe he was using one for his own viewing pleasure and didn’t remember to clear the history or use private mode. The next day, a kid picks it up and sees all the purple links in the search history and it spreads from there. Even better, maybe he logged into his google or firefox account (with ALL his history, for everything) on one of the shared devices and forgot to log out.
I really can’t think of any good reason to ignore the problem instead of fixing it and taking your lumps.
Also, just so I’m clear, this isn’t that bad, right? A few 4th and 5th grades kids learned the words breast and porn and did a google image search of those words. If that’s all this is, ISTM everything about that article (the parents, the teachers, the journalists that wrote it) seem to be really overreacting. Surely many of the kids in this school had already been exposed to things like this. I know I was (friend’s older brother would let us look at his Husters). Asking how a 9 year old could have learned the word porn is like asking your 19 year old where he learned about cigarettes.
That’s odd. It worked fine for me. Maybe try it again or use private mode? I even tried opening and closing it a few times to see if I could run out of free articles if that was the case, but it’s still working.
Here’s the condensed version
six to seven weeks of access to pornography on the third graders’ unfiltered iPads.
The principal insists the school took measures as soon as it understood the severity of the situation.
nearly seven weeks after the first alert, the school sent out a letter on “growing problems” with the use of technology in the third grade classroom.
I turned off adblocker in private mode - here’s the gist of it
“I think the most I can say,” the principal, Patrick “P.J.” Greer, told The Star, “is that there was a time period where there was some really unfortunate things going on with the use of iPads in our building. … When it became known to me that things were happening at the level they were happening, I took action.” But angry parents maintain they alerted the school at the start of March that some third graders may have been viewing “sexually inappropriate content” on their iPads, but the school failed to act for weeks. Worse still, they say, is the school’s attempt to cast at least partial blame on some of the kids, who are 9 or 10 years old. “It’s basically a complete dismissal of accountability,” said outraged parent Brian Desch, who, because of this incident, does not plan on re-enrolling his third grade son in the school next year. “They’re just pointing the finger everywhere. I was paying my son’s tuition because I bought into the image of, you know, ‘We’re going to hold ourselves to a higher standard. We’re going to be accountable. We’re going to live a moral life filled with integrity and honesty.’ And I have yet to see where any of that has been displayed with the leaders of that school.”
Yeah, it’s one thing for a school administration to screw up something IT-related, like forgetting to re-subscribe to their filtering service. That’s ordinary to-err-is-human. But to discover that your students are successfully searching up porn, and then do nothing about it for seven weeks? And even then, to try to blame it on the kids? Something’s definitely wrong, here.
Had this happened in a Kansas public school, the howls across the state would be loud indeed, especially since there’s an ongoing battle between the right-wing GOP-led legislature and our moderate Dem governor, Laura Kelly, over school vouchers. This incident might point out that our public schools have more accountability than a private school.
“Someone reportedly pulled the pin on the device and it detonated,” Sheriff Oscar Martinez Jr. said in a statement.
Authorities say anyone who finds a grenade or other explosive ordnance should move away from the device
If they pull the pin, I think that’s solid advice.
I would observe the Stupid MFer element in this last story extends past the generations to gramps abscoding with a live grenade as a keepsake.
Grandpa could never have anticipated that his militia might become dysregulated.
My money’s on someone in the faculty/administration turning off the filter to watch porn on the devices themselves (away from the prying eyes of their families) and not realizing they’d turned it off for all the devices.
How about this genius’s move?
An Ohio high school staff member sent students a website link for a purchasable sex toy—for which he was not charged.
Enquiring minds want to know!
Some really needs to lose their job over this. I suggest that it be the WHIO Staff for writing that horrible leading sentence.
From the article, one parent said that
He was told that the school had mistakenly let its paid filter protection lapse on the devices.
Which sounds plausible, particularly if the school didn’t have a full-time IT person.
But your suggestion is also a possibility, and the school will NEVER allow that fact to be revealed.
From the story:
“…said outraged parent Brian Desch, who, because of this incident, does not plan on re-enrolling his third grade son in the school next year. “They’re just pointing the finger everywhere. I was paying my son’s tuition because I bought into the image of, you know, ‘We’re going to hold ourselves to a higher standard. We’re going to be accountable. We’re going to live a moral life filled with integrity and honesty.’”
Back when I was in elementary school, students could expect a life filled with rote memorization, bullying and enforced conformity. Where have these timeless values gone?
He doesn’t really read the news, does he?
That’s what I remember as well.
One parent quoted in that story is an IT person who offered to install blockers on all the iPads from free, and the principal just blew her off. That to me is what raises this from “unfortunate accident” to “that motherfucker needs firin’”
I’m not sure “allow random parent to perform IT functions on all student’s devices” is a great way to move from “needs firin” to “good principal”.
And I’d do the same thing, being an IT professional, but I wouldn’t be put out if they rejected me. Because they don’t necessarily know me.
On the other hand, what raises my suspicions is how there were unaddressed complaints for weeks, and the end result is blaming students.
It’s like leaving a door unlocked to a secure room in a building, ignoring complaints for weeks that the door is unlocked, and then after you lock the door you’re trying to blame the people who went in there rather than the bozo who left it unlocked for weeks.