Policy of Anne Arundel County Public Schools of Maryland

If a staff member wishes to put information on the school systems computer the following procedures apply.
The staff member must submit a disc with the appropriate files to a person in the computer education office. This person reviews the files. If the files contain no offensive material then the discs are passed onto a person in the curriculum office. This person reviews the files a second time. Then the disc is given to a person in the computer office which places the files on the internet.

What's wrong with the policy?

The procedure takes so long that the material to be placed on the internet is out of date by the time it every reaches the audience. Furthermore, updates and changes are impossible.

Remmert's Home Page is not on the Board of Ed internet site. I pay for this site through a local internet provider so that I can provide timely information to students and parents.

Another Dumb Policy

The school system is very much interested in having students work on the internet. They are buying equipment (not enough though) and training teachers. However, the school system is very afraid of having students seeing something naughty, dangerous or politically incorrect. So teachers who have students "search" the internet are strongly encouraged to bookmark each site that students are to visit and then have students visit only the book marked sites. The phrase "strongly encouraged" means if a students sees anything they shouldn't the teacher is at fault and will be held accountable.

So what's wrong?

Students never get to see what the internet is all about. If this policy where carried out in the rest of the school systems activities then teachers would go the library, find acceptable material and lay the books out on a table opened to the correct page. Students would be warned not to turn the pages without supervision.