Parent urges District 64 to shut off Chromebook document-sharing after cyberbullying incident

Alberto DeChico, a parent of children at Franklin and Emerson, told the District 64 board on Dec. 18 that a Chromebook 'shared document' capability lets any student share a document with large numbers of peers across grades without teacher permission and is being used for cyberbullying. He said administrators disciplined students after a recent hurtful incident but urged the board to disable or greatly restrict the feature to prevent future harm.

"This is essentially a makeshift and unsupervised social media platform on all the kids' devices," DeChico said, describing a document he said had been shared with nearly 150 students across different schools and grades. He described features that let students add pictures or use the Chromebook camera and to invite or remove participants, and said the district's current practice of relying on rules and after-the-fact discipline is insufficient.

DeChico asked the board to "turn off immediately" or at minimum to "significantly reduce and highly safeguard" the sharing functionality and requested a status update from the administration at a future meeting. District staff acknowledged the incident and that disciplinary measures were taken in that case; administrators did not announce an immediate policy change during the meeting.

Next steps: Board members heard the concern and the superintendent and technology staff are positioned to follow up with specifics about current settings and any planned changes to device-sharing policies. DeChico said he looks forward to an update.