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SUSQUEHANNA TOWNSHIP SCHOOL DISTRICT

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 17109

Susquehanna Township School District
Web Policy

The availability of Internet access in the Susquehanna Township School District provides an opportunity for faculty, students and staff to contribute to the District's presence on the World Wide Web. The District's web site (HannaWeb) provides information to the world about school curriculum, instructional resources for students and faculty, student activities and athletic schedules, District standardized test scores, District budget information, enrollment statistics, food services information, District policies and other general information relating to our schools and our District's mission. Web pages should point internal users to good outside information sources, point external and internal visitors to good curriculum resources, activities and lesson plans and provide visitors with relevant information about the school district. Web page designers/publishers must realize that visitors to HannaWeb may include Susquehanna Township students and their families, prospective students and their families, Susquehanna Township faculty and staff, residents of Susquehanna Township, students, faculty and staff from other school districts and anyone in the world with Internet access. Creators of web pages need to familiarize themselves with and adhere to the following policies and responsibilities. Failure to follow these policies or responsibilities may result in the loss of authoring privileges or may result in disciplinary measures.

Subject Content

 All subject matter posted on district web pages (along with external World Wide Web Links) must relate to curriculum, instruction, school-authorized activities or general information that is appropriate and of interest to the school community. Therefore, neither staff nor students may publish personal home pages or home pages for other individuals or organizations not directly affiliated with the Susquehanna Township School District on HannaWeb. Faculty, students and staff may not use District web pages to provide access to personal pages on other on-line servers. Faculty, student's or staff's work may be published only as it relates to a class project, course or other school-related activity.

Quality and Web Page Content Standards

 All web pages must be free of spelling and grammatical errors. Documents may not contain objectionable material or link directly to objectionable material. Objectionable material is defined as material that does not meet the standards for instructional resources specified in district policies. Any links to other web pages that are not specifically curriculum related must meet the criteria established in the district AUP (Acceptable Use Policy). Links cannot be made to commercial or political advertisement sites, and web pages are prohibited from containing banner ads and promotions. Web pages hosted by the district will not be utilized as a forum for personal beliefs, commercial endorsements, or opinions, nor shall the content reflect policies contrary to those of the Susquehanna Township School District. Final determination on quality or propriety of web page material, appearance, or content, will be determined by building web coordinators, the district web coordinator, building level principals and/or district administrators. Concern about the content of any page(s) created by students or staff should be directed to the Building Principal of that school or to that school's web coordinator. Web page authors should assume that materials on the web are copyrighted unless a disclaimer or waiver is expressly stated. All web pages on the District's server(s) are property of the Susquehanna Township School District.

• Web pages may only include student first names.

• Web pages may not provide student's phone numbers, addresses or names of families or friends.

• Although faculty e-mail may be published, student e-mail addresses may not be listed on web pages.

• Student photographs, artwork or written works may only be published if a signed (with signatures of parents/guardians and students) web publishing form is on file in the school office (see below).

• No students will have access to Internet web pages unless there is a signed AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) on file in the school office.

• Faculty and staff collaborating with students will review all work (prior to posting web pages on HannaWeb) to insure the work contains no prohibited information.

• No materials from any of HannaWeb's pages may be copied without express written permission.

Copyright laws do not allow the republishing of text or graphics found on external Internet sites, HannaWeb sites or pages without explicit written permission. When using text or images from sites with explicit permission, links and/or URL's must be listed to identify or credit the locations granting the permissions.

Unless there is a specific agreement to the contrary, works of authorship created by employees within the scope of the employment relationship shall be the property of the District. Student works of authorship, unless created while the student is working for the District, is the property of the individual student.

Linked sites are not under the control of the District and the District is not responsible for the contents of any linked site or any link contained in a linked site, or any changes or updates to such sites. The District is providing these links only as a convenience, and the inclusions of any link does not imply endorsement of the site by the District.

In order to maintain consistency, professional appearance and ease of maintenance by web coordinators, the following standards must be followed:

• Before designing a web page for HannaWeb, investigate what already exists in order to avoid duplication or redundancy.

• All subject matter and content must relate to curriculum instruction, school-authorized activities or general information that is appropriate and, of interest to the school community, or it should relate to education.

• All information must be factually correct and be updated frequently.

• All subject matter must follow the Quality and Web Page Content Standards outlined in this document and provide for all student safeguards listed in this document.

• Each non-static page must include dates of last update and responsible teacher's name or initials at the bottom of the main index page (static pages must include teacher's name or initials).

• The main index page must provide a link to the teacher's building page and a link to HannaWeb.

• All non-static pages must be kept current. Teachers must also check pages often and remove any outdated links.

• All web pages must be approved by the building web coordinators and building principals prior to being published on HannaWeb.

• Teachers must exhibit care when creating web pages with extensive tiled backgrounds or large graphics. Such files require extensive download time, are frustrating for modem users, and slow down the file servers. As a general rule, a web page should not take longer than one minute to download over a telephone modem connection. Graphics files should be under 100K in size unless a special situation exists that requires a larger graphic. Graphics should be minimized (utilizing graphics editing software) for maximum download retrieval.

• Web pages must not contain broken links, outdated or missing links or broken images of any kind.

• Web pages may not contain links to other web pages not yet completed. If additional pages are anticipated, but not yet developed, the text that will provide such a link should be included. However, the actual link to said page(s) may not be made until the final page is actually in place on the District server(s). Teachers are highly encouraged to avoid "Under Construction" pages.

• Pages must include a copyright statement.

• Teachers must check with their building web coordinator before using video, audio and large graphics.

• The authorized teacher who is publishing the final web page(s) will edit and test the page(s) for accuracy of links and check for conformance with standards outlined in this policy.

Information about web page naming structures and design procedures can be found on the District’s Intranet.