::Looking for just the right speaker for that Back to School rally?
Here are a few ideas from some of our own:

• John Alston – www.johnalston.com
• Lorraine Monroe, former principal of Harlem's Frederick Douglass Academy and creator of the Monroe Leadership Principles
• Eric Wahl, artist and motivational speaker

::The Dangers of MySpace.com
As more and more students are using myspace.com to publish personal websites, school districts are faced with a moral responsibility to protect students, even at home. Here are some of the ways CalSPRA member districts are handling the new challenge:

• San Luis Obispo county PTA is joining with law enforcement and districts to get the word out to parents about internet safety and a federally funded program called i-Safe, which has identified myspace.com as the most dangerous internet website. i-Safe will make powerful presentations at schools, district, board meetings and so on.

• Murrieta Valley Unified sent out an advisory notice to secondary school students last June.  It can be accessed on the district website at http://www.murrieta.k12.ca.us/pdfs/ParentAdvisory_myspacecom.pdf.  Also, MVUSD did an article warning parents about myspace.com in the district newsletter, bottom of page 6:  http://www.murrieta.k12.ca.us/pdfs/_boardMeetingsHilites/MVUSDJuly2005.pdf

• Riverside Unified mailed a letter to parents of all fifth through twelfth grade students and an Op/Ed piece by Superintendent Susan Rainey ran in the local newspaper, The Press Enterprise: http://www.pe.com/localnews/opinion/localviews/PE_OpEd_Opinion_D_op22_myspace_loc.cccea96.html

• Find some additional interesting things about myspace.com at http://www.wiredsafety.org/internet101/myspaceguide.html

::Webmaster or no Webmaster?

• Santa Barbara School District has a part-time webmaster. All text comes through Barbara Keyani, special projects and communication, for editing and/or review, and then Keyani assigns it to the web master. This process saves the webmaster from the difficult position of taking direction from every department and school site. Keyani and the webmaster confer frequently about what the site should look like.
• San Bernardino City School District has a full-time web designer/developer who takes direction from the communications/community relations director. Duties of the web designer/developer include:  design and maintenance of district web sites, creation of appropriate content elements for district web and link sites, implementation of web site revisions and updates, provision of technical and design support for web sites, and more.
•  Santa Barbara COE has a webmaster that reports to the director of communication but is physically housed in the Computer Center because of the need to work near their techies. The director of communications approves all content before it is uploaded. Wendy Shelton says SBCOE’s first design, a design-by-committee, was a disaster. “Too many cooks. The end product pleased no one. We've done two redesigns (and a third is underway) since then that were far more successful. Basically we came up with what we wanted ("we" being me, the webmaster and our graphic designer). I made sure our superintendent was pleased, and then I shared it with Cabinet and asked everyone to get back to me individually with any concerns or comments,” Shelton said.
• At the Kings County Office of Education, each department is responsible for its own departmental pages on the website.  Most department secretaries are responsible to keep it current with information, events, pictures and more (as they are familiar with all happening in their department).
• Mike Bement, Chino Valley USD Director of Technology says that “On about the 1st day of our new Supt’s 2nd week in Chino (and about 3 months into my time, here) he stopped by my office and said ‘Could we just take down our website altogether until we can get a real one?’ After a few shaky moments of mental collapse and recovery, I was able to persuade him to let us leave the old site up (with a picture of a wrecking ball in the middle of it). Chino Valley contracted with SchoolFusion from Colorado to host its website and provide content management tools. Bement says he’d be glad to discuss the process, how much of the work is being done by he and by staff developers, and how the whole experience compares to his experience with a full-time webmaster on staff in Fontana. “In short, I’m liking this solution and teachers are really starting to buy into the school-to-home communication piece.”
• The Elk Grove Unified School District webmaster is in the Technology Department, but the Communications Department works closely with the Tech Department and oversees all content of the website.  Suzanne Thibault says the web site has cut informational type phone calls from parents drastically, because they can find answers on the website.