Teacher Could Get Jail-time For School’s Negligence

Posted by Ken

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Julie Amero, a substitute teacher at an elementary school in Connecticut, is looking at a potential whopping 40 years of jail time on four counts of risking injury to a child. There was nothing physical going on, but somehow the classroom computer displayed pop-ups of pornographic material.

I don’t see the connection to calling it an “injury”, but the way things played out is she received permission from the usual teacher to use the computer, who incidentally, forgot to logout. When Amero left the class briefly, she returned to find the children gathered round the computer. Much to her surprise, she panicked when she saw pornographic images popping up on the screen.

Now, Amero claims that she did nothing to cause these to display. Based on what I’ve read, I tend to agreed with her. Here’s why.

Why would someone risk losing their job by initiating such activity? Furthermore, why would they do it with a room full of school-aged children? It just doesn’t make sense to me.

The school admitted to not keeping their firewall license current and that the antivirus software on the computer was way out of date. Well duh! That’s an accident just waiting to happen.

An expert brought in to defend Amero would have testified that the system was also infected with adware and spyware. I say “would have testified” were it not for some technicality that caused his testimony to never make it to court. (Those darn technicalities!)

Based on the information, I don’t see how a school would allow someone to take the fall for their own inactions. Let me rephrase that: I can see why they wouldn’t want to have their pants sued off by the children’s families, but seriously, stand up and do the right thing!

Does your kid’s school have current protection on the computers they use? Do they have policies in place that explain what a teacher and a child should and should not do on the computers at school? And have they taken appropriate measures to enforce those policies?

Inspired by: ars technica

[tags]internet safety,porn,teacher,school[/tags]

Pornography