As many people remember, in January an Ecker Hill teacher was charged with felony counts for “alleged inappropriate communications with a student that spanned approximately four months.” \u00a0According to the Park Record, “The allegations against [the teacher]\u00a0first came to light earlier this month when the accuser, a student at Ecker Hill, showed a school counselor a series of sexually explicit emails [the teacher]\u00a0had allegedly sent him.” At the time there was a justified outcry from the community over how something like this could happen and go unnoticed for so long. \u00a0In the next few days a new system will come online to help prevent something like what allegedly happened\u00a0from happening again at Park City schools.<\/p>\n
The school district has subscribed to a service called Gaggle. While the name doesn’t sound serious, their business is. Gaggle provides a monitoring solution that scans email, attachments, calendars, and documents looking for pornography, inappropriate images, and certain words. According to the School District’s press release, “Once an item is flagged, Gaggle Student Safety Representatives review content and apply district-approved intervention procedures.” Perhaps most importantly, this solutions watches over both students\u00a0and staff\u00a0for signs of mis conduct.<\/span><\/p>\n According to\u00a0Associate Superintendent of Human Resources, Dr. Tim McConnell, “<\/span>Contracting with Gaggle Safety Management will expand the district\u2019s current capabilities to monitor and filter content. Gaggle will not only alert us to inappropriate content, it will also allow us to be stay on top of issues like bullying, threats of violence and self-harm. I want to give credit to our Technology Director, Joe Stout, for finding this service and working out the details to have it implemented.\u201c<\/span><\/p>\n