Simple Guidelines for K-12 Publishing on the Internet
   

Purpose:  A schools' presence on the World Wide Web portion on the Internet should accomplish these purposes:

 1. Serve as a source of factual, positive information about the schools. In today's electronic world the Internet is an excellent public relations/communication medium.  
 2. Provide educational information and opportunities to the students, staff, administration, and patrons of the school community.  
 3. Enhance communication between the schools and the community.  


With these purposes in mind, the following guidelines are set to provide direction in publishing for the Internet.

Staff member internet e-mail addresses may be listed, but only with the staff member's permission.

 1. Content published by any school should be reviewed and approved by the building principal (or designee) prior to being published on the Internet.  
 2.

Pictures of individuals (students, staff, or patrons) should be published only if permission of the individual or parent /guardian is secured first.

­ Crowd scenes or pictures of individuals that do not visually identify a person may be iiiiiused without permission.
­ It is suggested that if student pictures are used, either no name or only first names are iiiiiused.

 
 3. Links to other sites can be very helpful and educational, but they can also lead to inappropriate sites for K-12 educational purposes. Therefore, links to sites other than educational or governmental (.edu or .k12) should be established only after careful review by the building principal (or designee). Links to personal pages should be avoided.  
 4. Schools may not be able to provide private e-mail for students. However, many students already have Internet e-mail addresses and free Internet e-mail accounts are available those having Internet access. It is recommended that students' e-mail addresses not be published.  
 5. Staff member internet e-mail addresses may be listed, but only with the staff member's permission.  


These guidelines are only to help get started in this process. As experience grows, it is likely these guidelines will be modified.

As a help to schools publishing on the internet, we refer to the following Internet sites:

­ Yale Web Style Manual (very scholarly)
­ Bellingham Public Schools Design Tenets For WWW Sites iiiii(practical)