The Missouri State Teachers Association filed an injunction Aug. 19 suing the state of Missouri over the constitutionality of Senate Bill 54, commonly known as the Amy Hestir Student Protection Act.
Section 162.069 of the bill, which addresses exclusive social media contact between school staff and students, has been questioned by teachers, parents and students. Many interest groups and community members have expressed concern with the bill being open to interpretation for school districts to enforce.
Missouri State Teachers Association spokesman Todd Fuller said the bill was unclear.
“Our biggest concern was that the bill was so unclear as to define what a teacher could and could not do that teachers started to ask questions that no one had answers to,” he said. “For instance, a teacher may say, ‘I work in a neighboring school district. (The children in my neighborhood) are not my students, but they are students. Technically this bill does not allow me to interact with them.’ And the teacher is right, technically, it does not.”
The section of the bill largely in question would not only prohibit exclusive teacher-student contact over social networks such as Facebook.
Fuller said that websites teachers had been using for years, as well as texting, fell under the bill as well.
“After the legislation was passed and signed by the governor, it became clear pretty quickly that the language needed to be improved in that bill regarding the social networking and relationships between students and teachers in electronic communication,” Missouri School Boards’ Association spokesman Brent Ghan said. “Certainly, the goal of that provision is worthwhile in an attempt to prevent inappropriate contact between teachers and students. However, the language was very vague and it became very confusing as to where the lines would be drawn in the area of student-teacher communication and what it meant exactly.”
Teachers’ groups were not the only people with issues understanding the bill. Certain politicians had problems with the wording as well.
“I think the wording was the only issue,” Sen. Kurt Schaefer, R-Columbia said. “The teachers’ groups who I worked closely with were in support of the bill that was passed. The clarification is necessary and I think we could easily work to get that done.”
Now that the bill has been put on hold until at least Feb. 12, 2012, the MSBA and MSTA now have time to work with senators to rewrite the bill.
“The Missouri School Board Association is working with the teachers’ organizations and other education groups as well as other legislative sponsors of this bill to try to draft some language that would allow teachers to use social networking, while at the same time protecting our students from unwanted communication,” Ghan said. “We are pleased that we have some time now to work on that and I think if we all put our heads together we can come up with some language that will be workable for teachers.”
Gov. Jay Nixon called for Section 162.069 to be repealed and his decision will be reviewed in the Missouri Special Session on Sept. 6.
“(Nixon) is not talking about fixing the language; he is talking about taking it completely out and we think that is what should happen,” Fuller said. “We think the governor should repeal the language. Most school districts already have policies in place to deal with social networking sites and how teachers and students are using social media sites, so (Nixon should) allow the districts to already do what they have been doing to resolve the problem if there were any to begin with.”