BOULDER – The Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) and the Colorado Office of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) today announced an agreement spelling out new BVSD guidelines to be used in the search of cell phones by district administrators. The new guidelines will be distributed to administrators by the BVSD legal counsel. They will go beyond existing law to require BVSD administrators to obtain the permission of either the student or a parent prior to an administrator’s search of a student’s cell phone. The one exception to these guidelines that would allow an administrator to search a cell phone without permission would be an emergency situation in which there is an imminent threat to public safety.
BVSD and the Colorado ACLU also agreed to disagree about whether any violation of Colorado law occurred in the spring of 2007 when a Monarch High School administrator, upon advice from the district’s legal counsel, searched a student’s cell phone without student or parent permission. BVSD continues to stand behind the spring 2007 actions of Monarch administrators.
However, in order to seek a balance between the need to guarantee school safety and student compliance with school policies and to protect an individual student’s civil liberties, BVSD and the ACLU began a series of discussions on this issue. Those discussions culminated in agreement at the end of last week.
BVSD praised the ACLU’s willingness to constructively and civilly engage in a helpful and productive way on this challenging issue.
Read today's ACLU news release about this agreement.