Saturday, 12 February 2005

going too far?

my teenage daughter came home last week and relayed an incident at her school that has me wondering how far a school representative is allowed to go ...
her school has a zero tolerance for students having cell phones at school .. and i agree completely with the enforcement of the rule .. any cell phones are confiscated and will be returned to the student at the end of the day
students can receive permission to have cell phones on their person, but the phones are never to be turned on during school hours
one of the students was caught by the vice principal checking for messages on her cell phone
the phone was confiscated by the vice principal
when the student went to retrieve the phone at the end of the day, she was surprised to find that the secretary was in the process of reading all of her text messages .. the vice principal had also read all of her text messages, and upset with the content of the messages (being rather flirty with a boy) proceeded to call the students mother and inform her of the content of the text messages he found
perhaps i could understand their "need to know" if the student had been using the text messages during class or during a test, but this wasn't the case, the phone was used between classes
as a parent who believes that even teenagers have a right to privacy, i am astounded at the vice principals behavior .. it just doesn't feel right
i have checked the school districts policy on confiscation of cell phones and nothing i found gives any school representative the right to invade a students privacy
had it been my daughter you would find me down at the school board insisting that the vice principal be reprimanded
i realize i'm probably in the minority in my thinking, but i feel that if anybody is going to invade my childs privacy, its going to be ME

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