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The Livingstone Range School Board is taking steps to ensure its social media posts are up to date.
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The directors have approved the addition or deletion of positions approved by the Chairman of the Board of Directors in emergency situations.
The discussion at the Jan. 18 meeting at the GR Davis Administration Building in Fort Macleod followed an incident last month.
A Livingstone Range social media post welcomed pupils back to school on January 3 after the Christmas holidays.
Around the same time, Education Minister Adriana LaGrange announced that the return to school would be delayed by a week until January 10 due to rising COVID-19 cases.
The Livingstone Range post remained in place with the erroneous information.
“While the intent of the original post was in good faith, this unfortunate incident underscores the need to review the protocol for accessing social media,” President Lacey Poytress said.
Currently, social media protocol allows access to three administrative staff.
Administrator Carla Gimber presented the recommendation to grant the president access to social media accounts.
“I don’t think the meaning behind it is that the president is actively publishing,” Gimber said. “If there is something that needs to be removed, there is another person who has access to it and who is not part of the administrative staff.”
Trustee Greg Long suggested this was an administrative issue, not a board governance issue.
“If there’s a problem with this Facebook post not going down fast enough, I’d rather our entire administration had access to it,” Long said.
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Long suggested adding more administrators to the access list rather than administrators.
“We are a school board,” Long said. “We are talking about governance, not administration.”
Administrator Brad Toone supported the recommendation, although he agreed with Long on the issue of governance.
Long said that in a digital world, it makes sense to give the president access as the council’s spokesperson.
“In an emergency, I would like our president or the school board to have the same access,” Toone said.
Administrator Lori Hodges said she fears a future president will abuse that privilege by posting unauthorized messages.
“If this is something the board wants, there has to be some strict guidelines about it,” Hodges said. “I think that could potentially be a problem.”
Trustee Clara Yagos agreed.
“Anything the president posts or says has to be approved by the board,” Yagos said.
The directors approved the recommendation and directed the Policy Committee to develop guidelines for consideration by the board at the March 22 meeting.
