School and District web sites provide unique and ever-changing ways to interact with the community and improve student learning. Web content must have a purpose that falls within at least one of the following categories:
- Allow an individual school to provide current and complete information to its community at large;
- Give the school a means to communicate effectively with students and personnel;
- Support the curriculum, instruction and educational processes; and
- Provide new avenues for teachers to help students meet high standards of performance.
- All web content information must accurately reflect the mission, goals, policies, program, and activities of the Cherry Creek School District. All subject matter should relate to curriculum, instruction, and general information that is appropriate, or it should relate to activities of the District or the schools within the District.
- All material on a school website shall be either original to the school, in the public domain, or posted with the express permission of its rightful owner. This includes, but is not limited to, text, graphics, pictures, video, sounds, music, characters, logos, and trademarks. Web page publications shall follow all applicable copyright laws and guidelines.
- Neither staff nor students may publish personal home pages as part of the District's websites.
- Web page documents for individuals or organizations not directly affiliated with the District may not be published on District servers.
- Teachers may maintain instructional pages on the school's website. They may also maintain and link to instructional sites on remote servers, especially servers designed for educational use, provided that the linked sites conform to all parts of this policy.
- All web content containing links to external web sites and/or pages must include the following disclaimer: "You are now leaving the Cherry Creek School District No. 5 website. Please note that the District does not control nor can it guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, completeness, or appropriateness of this information. The information or opinions contained on these web sites and/or pages do not necessarily represent the views of the Cherry Creek School District No. 5."
- District Web page publications shall not be used for endorsements or commercial purposes to be defined as "advertising, offering or providing products or services." This includes, but is not limited to, the sponsoring, promoting or marketing of products or services.
- Schools may participate in commercial sites external to the district designed for school fundraising, providing the guidelines of this policy and other applicable policies are followed. Schools may also publish original web content as a part of their website for the purposes of fundraising.
- District Web content may allow for the online publication of student newspapers, and/or student literary magazines, provided that those sections are clearly identified as student-generated publications. Materials published in those sections must meet the requirements of established school policy for student print publications and applicable state and federal laws related to student expression. A staff member assigned by the principal or his or her designee must supervise the publication. All articles must conform to relevant portions of the web and Internet publishing policy and regulations, including, but not limited to, restrictions related to privacy and confidentiality.
- Because Internet publications are available to the entire world, special care shall be taken to protect the privacy of students and staff. Web pages may not include personally identifying information regarding a student such as telephone numbers, addresses, names of other family members, names of friends, email addresses, specific location of a student at any given time, grades or any other academic information. No confidential information shall be published on or linked to the website.
- Student work may be published on the web only with written consent of the student's parent/guardian or the eligible student before each incident of publication.
- Links to student email accounts are prohibited.
- Pictures of students may be included only under the following conditions:
- Individual student pictures may be published on the website only with written consent of the student's parent/guardian or eligible student.
- Pictures of groups of students involved in a school-related activity may be published without consent; however, the students shall only be identified by the group name.
- Students shall not be individually identified in pictures unless there is a special reason for doing so, such as recognition for receiving an award. In such cases, the student's parent/guardian or eligible student must give written consent.
- If e-mail replies to Web content are appropriate, only the sponsoring staff member's e-mail address or a generic district e-mail address should be displayed, not the student's.
- Every effort shall be made to ensure all web content is free of spelling and grammatical errors and only contain links to educationally appropriate material.
- All web content that includes or may include personally identifiable confidential information about students or staff must limit access through a user name and password. These pages must also conform to relevant portions of the web and Internet publishing policy and regulations, including, but not limited to, restrictions related to privacy and confidentiality. Passwords and user names required to maintain the site shall be carefully guarded to ensure that only authorized personnel have the opportunity to make changes on a school or District website. Cherry Creek School District does not and cannot control access and/ or content of Internet sites. The school district shall not be responsible for any material or information accessed on the Internet via any links or otherwise by any user, and shall not be responsible for the impact or effect of the information on the user.