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Student Security & Monitoring on School Networks

 

Students login to Chromebooks and computers through Google, using school-issued Google for Education accounts. Student use of the Internet is monitored in multiple ways to keep students safe and ensure they are using the devices for appropriate, school-approved purposes for education.

 

One service we employ is from a company called Gaggle. They provide monitoring of all student files in Google Drive, in chats (where this is enabled), and in email. Student files are scanned by Gaggle for text that indicates threats, bullying of any kind, violence, suicide concerns, inappropriate/sexual images or talk - basically anything that would cause concern for students' health and safety. If a message or image is flagged during scanning, a trained human reader with Gaggle will open and view the content of the message/image, and will notify three designated adult employees of the school system who then alert the appropriate principal if necessary to intervene with the student. 

 

Another method of monitoring / security is use of Securly web content filtering. In this program students are grouped according to grade range, and filtering of web content is applied to the grouped students. Filtering is also applied to Faculty and Staff in their group and to Administrators in theirs. Primarily, sites that contain inappropriate content (i.e. sexual in nature) or that are known sources of malware (this includes many free online game sites) are filtered from access in this way. This program also helps to prevent use of VPNs or proxies to by-pass the content filter. Every user's Internet access is logged and their use can be and is pulled as a report when a conference with the student is necessary. 

 

Finally, student use of personal devices on the school networks is not allowed, therefore, several additional systems on the network are used to identify and remove "rogue" devices that do not belong to the schools. This is performed periodically to reduce the volume of traffic on the network so that performance of our many wireless school-owned devices, such as Chromebooks in classrooms, have better connections and enough bandwidth. There are currently approximately 600 Chromebooks at CPHS, along with five desktop computer labs, numerous teacher laptops and other devices on the network. Providing bandwidth and ready access to the Internet on all devices is challenging and school-owned devices must have priority on the network over personal devices. The existing policy for CPHS students is to have cell phones at school but have them turned off.