Westchester committee approves social-media, booster-club and volunteer policy updates
Summary
The policy committee approved updates to social-media, booster-club, volunteer and Title I engagement policies on Nov. 17, after debate about employee use of personal social media and new booster-club financial limits.
The Westchester Area School District policy committee on Nov. 17 approved a package of policy updates that included social-media rules, a technology-lending policy, an updated booster-club policy and several administrative guidelines.
District staff summarized changes to the social-media policy (8 15.1), arguing against a broad prohibition that would bar district employees from interacting with parents’ personal social-media accounts. “There are lots of totally appropriate reasons why your employees could be interacting with parents’ social media or maybe in the same groups as them,” a staff presenter told the committee, citing uses from residency checks to routine communications.
Board members and at least one parent pressed for clearer language to prevent misuse. A parent who spoke during the policy discussion described having been doxxed after staff used information gathered from an online group and said the policy should explicitly ban malicious uses of personal accounts.
The committee also approved an updated technology-lending policy (8 15.3) that removes references to an unused form and clarifies process and device allocations for staff. Committee members asked staff to consider classroom needs where a teacher might require more than one device.
A substantial update to the booster-club policy (9 15.1) and its administrative guideline (AG3) has moved many operational details into AGs and added explicit financial reporting and governance steps for new booster groups. The policy now caps compensation tied to camps or clinics: “the total administrative compensation and the compensation of all individuals working the camp or clinic shall not exceed 50% of the net profit of the camp or clinic,” the presenter said, language the committee adopted.
Other approved items included modest wording and compliance updates to the volunteer policy (9 16) — which calls out the senior volunteer exchange program and clarifies certification steps — and Title I parent-and-family-engagement edits (9 18) to align with federal and state guidance.
All the policy votes passed by voice vote during the meeting. The committee announced that additional AGs would be circulated for review and that several related AGs remain under further consideration.
