Kentucky lawmakers unanimously passed a bill earlier this year that its sponsors said would help prevent teachers from grooming or having inappropriate conversations with students by requiring school employees to use traceable forms of communications with them. But now, some educators are concerned that the new law’s impacts stretch far beyond its intentions.
Under Senate Bill 181 – which took effect on June 27 – school district employees, like teachers and coaches, and volunteers must exclusively use traceable communications systems designated by local boards of education to communicate electronically with any student.
Generally, this means teachers aren’t allowed to contact students through texting, phone calls, social media or other untraceable methods. The policy change would even make it so district emails would have to be designated by school boards as an acceptable form of traceable communication before teachers could use them to contact students.
Exceptions are made if the employee or volunteer is a family member of the student – which the law defines as a parent, brother, sister, son, daughter, aunt, uncle or grandparent. Notably, stepparents and stepchildren are not exempt from SB 181.
Kentucky Education Association president Joel Wolford said the organization believes the motivations behind the bill were good. But, as written, the new law’s impact stretches beyond what it’s intended to prevent.
“[SB 181] was to protect students from inappropriate communication or grooming, and it protects educators from false accusations. But it's too broadly written, and there are a lot of unintended consequences that have come along with this,” he said.
“Teachers have lives outside of school. Some hold part time or summer jobs where the supervisors have contact with students. Many of our educators are Sunday school teachers, youth ministers or pastors. They teach Bible school, and they have reason to be in contact with the students that they encounter in those situations.”
Teachers, administrators and other certified staff who violate the law are subject to discipline from the state’s Education Professional Standards Board, whose punishments can range from written admonishments to the revoking of teaching certificates. If school officials find that a volunteer communicated with a student outside of the proper channels, that person would be banned from future volunteer opportunities in the district.
Allison Slone is a special education teacher in Rowan County and founded the Facebook group Kentucky Teachers in the Know, a space for people who work in the Commonwealth’s public schools to discuss things that are happening in their classrooms. She said some teachers are concerned that actions once considered innocuous could cost them their careers.
“This is something that we are really worried [about], that people are going to get in trouble for things that they shouldn't be in trouble for, and potentially lose their teaching license for something as innocent as helping a child get food on the table or reminding a child that they have practice at a certain time,” Slone said.
The group launched a petition asking the state legislature to review and make changes to SB 181 to clean up ambiguous language and the broad scope of the bill. As of Thursday, that petition had nearly 12,000 signatures.
Slone said students sometimes message teachers when they need support in their home lives because of the trusted relationships the educators have built with them. Now, if a student reaches out for help through unapproved channels, she said educators are left in a spot where they’re unable to respond.
“In the stories of children who were, you know, possibly suicidal, or didn't have food in their home, or didn't feel safe in their own home, [the students] would reach out to these educators who they completely trusted with everything in them. Now they can no longer do that, right?” Slone said.
The law does allow for parents to sign waivers with school districts allowing specific employees or volunteers to talk with their children outside of traceable systems. These waivers need to be filled out for every individual school employee or volunteer a parent allows their child to talk to outside of the traceable systems – even if the reason for needing to contact them isn’t school-related.
For example, McCracken County Schools says if a student has multiple chaperones on a school trip, the student’s parent or guardian would need to submit a separate waiver for each chaperone to communicate with them outside of the traceable methods – like allowing chaperones to text students to check on their whereabouts. The same rule applies for school sports teams with multiple coaches.
In a district-wide letter, Muhlenberg County Schools superintendent Contessa Orr said these waiver forms would be needed for people that work or volunteer in the district, even for non-school relationships. That even includes friends of the employee or volunteer’s children in their care, students that babysit for an educator’s family, children that are in a church youth group led by someone employed by the district and extended family members like cousins.
Wolford said this law could deter people from volunteering in local schools.
“It puts them in a position where, if a student contacts them, or they inadvertently contact the students that they could be charged with that and banned from working anymore in schools,” he said.
Outside of her teaching role, Slone is also an artist who sells her work on social media.
“I have to be extremely careful now that I don't somehow accidentally respond to a child that is a student in one of our K-12 public schools, because I wouldn't necessarily know that they were a student,” she said.
Slone also said, because of the way the law is written, some districts’ legal interpretation of the legislation varies from others.
“One district will tell them it only has to do with the students in their district. Some districts are saying it only has to do with the students in your school,” Slone said. “Some districts are saying the law doesn't state that at all – [that] it just says K-12 students, so that could be any student in the entire state. That's going to cause some people to get in some hot water as well.”
In an op-ed published last week regarding SB 181, Republican state Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, the bill’s primary sponsor, said the law was “carefully written to protect students.”
“Despite concerns, the law's intent is widely supported. Students and teachers deserve to learn and work in an environment grounded in trust and integrity,” Tichenor wrote.
However, she noted that clarification may be needed in a few areas – including expanding exemptions to include stepparents, in-laws and cousins; defining who qualifies as a school volunteer; outlining how districts should honor parental consent for outside communication; and providing guidelines on using methods like texting or social media messaging in group settings.
