Lee’s Summit R-7 School District is committed to protecting students’ and staff’s secure and private information. The security, safety and protection of student data is important to the district and it is a significant responsibility that they honor and accept. The district’s technology team operates from a comprehensive plan for securing data – including vendor addendums and agreements, policies, procedures and practices that constantly and consistently evaluate the security of their platforms and our data.

Because they believe in students at the center of the instructional compass, they know that they must have access to the most relevant, engaging resources in environments that allow for creativity and independent navigation of tools and thought. Students’ ability to have an online presence is part of their daily approach to teaching relevant and real-world applications. The learning environment includes digital tools to help in this learning process.

Part of the teaching practice includes teaching students about their digital safety as well. Digital citizenship is an important part of this conversation. With this, the Lee’s Summit R-7 staff will be using district-approved apps and digital resources for instructional purposes this year. The district will work to ensure approved apps and resources that require the use of student data are compliant with COPA, FERPA and Board Policy while also ensuring student data is protected.

Not only are the teachers trained on how to evaluate potential resources, but they will also train the students on good data security practices as well. As part of this process, Lee’s Summit R-7 will be discontinuing access to the Chrome web store in late September and students will only be able to download district-approved apps and resources. This change is directly reflective of the need to constantly monitor and evaluate the digital offerings for student and staff data safety.

For more information about this data security change, visit the district’s Instructional Technology web page at https://sites.google.com/a/lsr7.net/lsr7its/home.