LPOSD trustees hear from staff on cybersecurity

Board trustees for the Lake Pend Oreille School District heard presentations on cybersecurity and safety at their meeting Tuesday night.

Previously, the board had heard from a concerned parent at their last meeting regarding students accessing pornography and inappropriate content on cellphones during bus rides and on school-provided Chromebooks.

LPOSD Director of Technologies Matt Brass said within school facilities, the district uses a firewall service that automatically limits certain websites, with strict limitations for students and unauthenticated users.

Those firewalls are regularly updated along with block lists his department can update, he said, though no system is entirely foolproof.

“Kids are always trying to find a way around it,” he said. “If somebody starts a website and it’s a private website, it takes a while [for the system to get through to it].”

Restrictions through the school Wi-Fi are limited based on the login, Brass said. Student guest Wi-Fi is the most restricted, followed by students, then teachers. Students are also given more or less access depending on their grade level.

“If you’re doing a report as a twelfth-grader, you should see different information than if you’re a third-grader,” he said.

District IT also is able to look through websites that were viewed using school Wi-Fi connections within a roughly four- to six-week period after, he said.

In regards to students viewing inappropriate material on cellphones and in buses, it can be a more difficult problem to deal with, said Superintendent Tom Albertson. Because buses don’t have Wi-Fi there’s no way to directly monitor content except through reporting.

The parents who had reached out to the school board had suggested bus drivers collect cellphones from students and return them at the end of the ride. However, that presented several challenges, one of which is that many parents prefer their children to have access to cellphones.

“I’ve been on both sides of it. I’ve heard from parents, ‘These are my kids’ phones, don’t touch them,’” Albertson said.

Many parents, said transportation director James Koehler, also like their students to have phones so they can have instant communication with their child if there’s a delay or change of plans for the student’s pickup.

Another challenge for bus drivers, Koehler said, is that bus cabs are designed to not have anything loose in the open, meaning drivers would not have a place they could legally stow the phones within reach.

Confiscating expensive electronics also creates liability for drivers, he said. The accumulation of dozens of students’ phones would likely be worth several thousand dollars.

“Phones are delicate and very expensive,” Koehler said. “If something gets damaged, where do we go? So that’s a concern for the driver.”

The main recourse, he said, is for parents to use technologies like parental controls and for students to make reports. The transportation department may also start providing signage with information on how to make reports.

In his career at the district, Koehler said, he’s had two reports of inappropriate content being shared on cellphones on a bus.

“I don’t know if it’s happening,” he said, “because it’s not being reported.”

Clerk of the board, Kelly Fisher, also announced Tuesday that seats for trustees Cary Kelly, Lonnie Williams and Gary Suppiger will be up for election, with petitions due by 5 p.m. Sept. 3.

Kelly, who will turn 80 in September, said he does not plan to seek re-election.

I thought I would step aside and allow someone else to have this wonderful experience,” he said.