Inappropriate contact through social media and unauthorized cellphone communications, such as texting, can often lead to abuse allegations between students and teachers. These allegations can involve unapproved contact between young adult (18 – 29-year-olds) staff members and minors, but these allegations can also involve contact from older adult staff.

Some key points to drive home with your staff:

• If staff need to contact a student or parent through e-mail, all correspondence should be through their work e-mail address. Staff should not contact students or parents through their personal email addresses. In addition, e-mails should be sent to groups of students/parents, not an individual student or parent, as often as possible. If an e-mail is warranted to an individual student or parent, a designated staff member should be copied on the e-mail so that it is not a one-to-one communication.
• If staff need to text students or parents, this should also be done through their work e-mail as much as possible. While this may not be possible (for example, at a field trip where text messaging may be used to coordinate activities), texts should always be sent to more than one recipient, whether done from a cell phone or work e-mail address. If an individual text is warranted, always copy a designated staff member on the text.
• Consider getting parental permission for a member to receive text messages from staff. The school can also include parental phone numbers in their distribution lists so that parents receive the same text as their children or teens.