I hope you are enjoying the summer and I'd like to share some information with you regarding recent legislation. House Bill 3958, approved by Oklahoma legislators and signed by Gov. Kevin Stitt this spring, requires school personnel engaging in electronic or digital communication with an individual student to include the student’s parent or guardian in the electronic or digital communication unless the communication is on a school-approved platform and related to school and academics.
The term “electronic or digital communication” includes, but is not limited, to emails, text messages, instant messages, direct messages, social media messages, messages sent through software applications, and any other electronic digital means of communication.
The law will go into effect July 1, 2024. To comply with provisions set forth in HB 3958, the CPS Board of Education will address a new policy – Policy DHAC Staff Members and Electronic or Digital Communications. The new policy will be posted for your reference when approved.
At this time, the district’s approved digital communication platform is school-issued Gmail only. As such, if employees communicate directly with an individual students outside of Google Workspace (school-issued Gmail), parents must be included in that communication.
Please note, that this new law and policy does not impact mass communication sent from the district or a school site to parents through cpsok.org via email or text message. I can not stress enough that individual students can only be contacted with the parent being included in the conversation. Please let your students know that a staff member can not respond to an individual message.
The district is actively exploring options for digital communications with an individual student to include text messaging and allow for the application to be monitored and supported by the CPS Technology team. Our intention is to have something in place by the start of the school year in August.
Parents, please make sure your information is correct in PowerSchool.
We understand that you may have questions about this new law, as do we. There seem to be lots of gray areas. I don't want to jump into regulations without getting legal clarification. Additional information will be provided as soon as possible.
Thank you for your attention to this information.
Julie Bills - Superintendent