Dear Parents and Guardians: 

As parents and guardians you are the primary teachers and guides for values and ethics with your children; the St. Pius X High School community assists and supports this as much as possible.  As you know, technology and Internet growth is so fast that teenagers may not always have the level of sophistication or understanding to recognize some of the danger signals in communication and information use.  Because of this, we would like to share with you some information on blogs.  Blogs are continually updated on-line journals where people write and share thoughts, opinions and views.  Blogs may include photos, video clips, news, essays, poetry, music and links to other sites.  The user creates an account and begins posting content to his or her blog.  The blog is often available to the public; sometimes the access is controlled by the blog user.  Thousands of individuals, particularly young people have blogs.  Though there are beneficial uses for blogs such as in teaching and learning, there are many dangers.  Blogs sites are generally open to anyone to read.  Personal statements, inappropriate language or references provide information to anyone who might read the blog.  Blog sites may be open or closed at the will of the user; however, the sites and their contents can be owned by a company that has rights to all content.  The company does not necessarily monitor content in all instances – postings are at the discretion of individual users.  Closing a blog does not necessarily erase the contents of the blog.         

As a school faith community and as educators of your sons and daughters, we have concerns about the personal information that students share while blogging; that is, sharing things like their names, phone numbers, photos, where they live, attend school and work. Young people sometimes don’t realize that what they may be doing is giving out information that may make them vulnerable and allows strangers to know where they are and what they are doing.  We feel that we need to communicate with you and alert you about this in the event you may not know about blogs.  Some common blog sites for young people are:  Xanga.com, MySpace.com and Blogger.com.  Teenagers often set up blogrings using their school name, mascot or motto and you can search using these names. 

We have spoken with some students whose blogs we have seen and have expressed our concerns to them about their vulnerability.  Some of you have been contacted if we found information on blogs that causes us concern.  We will be revising our AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) to make sure that our Internet guidelines are updated and clear.  Please continually check our website at www.stpiusx.org for additional information, suggestions, monitoring solutions and safety guidelines on blogs.   

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact an administrator or your student’s counselor.  Thank you for your on-going cooperation and support as we work together in the formation of your daughters and sons - our children.

 Sincerely,

Donna M. Pollard, O.P.
Head of School