BP 4040 — Employee Use of Technology

Section: 4000 - Personnel
Status: Active

Adopted: 2015-05-12

Revised: 2021-09-09

Policy text

EMPLOYEE USE OF TECHNOLOGY

The Governing Board recognizes that technological resources enhance employee performance by offering effective tools to assist in providing a quality instructional program; facilitating communications with parents/guardians, students, and the community; supporting district and school operations, and improving access to and exchange of information. The Board expects all employees to learn to use the available technological resources that will assist them in the performance of their job responsibilities. As needed, employees shall receive professional development in the appropriate use of these resources.

Employees shall be responsible for the appropriate use of technology and shall use district technology primarily for purposes related to their employment.

The Superintendent or designee shall establish an Acceptable Use Agreement that outlines employee obligations and responsibilities related to the use of district technology. Upon employment and whenever significant changes are made to the district’s Acceptable Use Agreement, employees shall be required to acknowledge in writing that they have read and agreed to the Acceptable Use Agreement.

Employees shall not use district technology to access, post, submit, publish, or display harmful or inappropriate matter that is threatening, obscene, disruptive, sexually explicit, or unethical or that promotes any activity prohibited by law, Board policy, or administrative regulations.

Harmful matter includes matter, taken as a whole, which to the average person, applying contemporary statewide standards, appeals to the prurient interest and is matter which depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct and which lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.

The Superintendent or designee shall ensure that all district computers with Internet access have a technology protection measure that protects against access to visual depictions that are obscene, child pornography, or harmful to minors and that the operation of such measures is enforced. The Superintendent or designee may disable the technology protection measure during use by an adult to enable access for bona fide research or other lawful purposes.

The Superintendent or designee shall annually notify employees in writing that they have no reasonable expectation of privacy in the use of any equipment or other technological resources provided by or maintained by the district, including, but not limited to, computer files, email, text messages, instant messaging, and other electronic communications, even when provided their own password. To ensure proper use, the Superintendent or designee may monitor employee usage of district technology at any time without advance notice or consent and for any reason allowed by law.

In addition, employees shall be notified that records maintained on any personal device or messages sent or received on a personal device that is being used to conduct district business may be subject to disclosure, pursuant to a subpoena or other lawful request.

Employees shall report any security problem or misuse of district technology to the Superintendent or designee.

Inappropriate use of district technology may result in a cancellation of the employee’s user privileges, disciplinary action, and/or legal action in accordance with law, Board policy, and administrative regulation.