School Posted Photos, Blocked Parent

When Beecher School parent Kelly Blanchat logged onto Instagram earlier this year, she found that the school had posted photos featuring her child — even though she had told the district not to share images of her kid on social media.

The public elementary school wound up taking those photos down.

It also temporarily blocked Blanchat from viewing Beecher’s Instagram account altogether — raising questions about how the district enforces its media-release policies, and whether or not a parent has a right to see what their child’s school is posting on the Internet.

Blanchat detailed that school social media saga during the public testimony section of a Board of Education meeting held last month at Ross Woodward School.

She informed the school board and superintendent that she had been waiting months and months for a resolution to the problem.

As of the publication of this article, Beecher School and a former school program contractor have removed from Instagram and Facebook all of the photos and videos that included Blanchat’s child. The district has also said that Blanchat has been un-blocked from viewing the school’s social media account. However, as of Monday, Blanchat said she still has not been unblocked.

“I did not deserve to be treated the way that I was for advocating for my family,” she told the Independent about the experience.

During her testimony to the school board in June, she asked, ​“If any of you had asked Beecher to take down images of your children, would you have been blocked and ignored? If not, then why did I deserve it?”

Here’s what happened, according to Blanchat, New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) spokesperson Justin Harmon, and email communications among Blanchat and state education and local officials that have been reviewed by the Independent.

Back in October, Blanchat submitted a media release form to her child’s school, indicating that she did not want any photos of her kid posted online.

That media release is a standard form presented to all NHPS parents.

The relevant part of the form reads in part: ​“I hereby grant permission to the New Haven Public Schools, its (Parent Name) affiliates and their successors, and any person receiving permission from any of them, to use my child’s (Child Name) picture, likeness, name, photograph or voice, at its discretion in Child’s Name publications or on video or audio tape including all online, reproduced digital formats, concerning education programs or activities of the New Haven Public Schools.”

Under that section, in response to the question ​“I consent to the use of Media Release,” Blanchat checked the box next to ​“No.”

In December, she found photos from November and December that had been posted to Beecher’s Instagram account and that included her child.

So she contacted the school and asked them to take the images down. Throughout Blanchat’s email exchanges she provided direct links to district leaders to indicate which posts included her child.

“In December, the school acknowledged having inadvertently imaged Ms. Blanchat’s daughter on Instagram,” NHPS spokesperson Justin Harmon told the Independent. ​“The school removed the posts and apologized. The error has not been repeated.”

Even after Beecher took those photos down, photos that had been posted by a program staffer who contracts with Beecher school remained online.

Harmon told the Independent that that contractor was not a teacher but ​“an individual associated with an affiliate organization that provides programming” at Beecher.

“We do share our social media policy with such individuals and groups, and we ask that they abide with our policy concerning parent releases,” he wrote. But, he continued, ​“because they tend to work with a volume of students, classrooms, and schools, it can be harder for them — and for us — to know they are always in compliance. Still, we make a good-faith effort. We have reached out to the individual and asked her to try to find and remove the image that includes Ms. Blanchat’s daughter.”

That program staffer, Wanda Faison, wound up taking the images down after the Independent asked questions for this article.

That wasn’t Blanchat’s only social media trouble with her child’s school.

In May, she said, Beecher and Faison blocked Blanchat from viewing their Instagram accounts — making it impossible for her to know whether or not the school and the school contractor were abiding by her media preferences for her child.

Blanchat said the school blocked her ability to view its Instagram account because staffers viewed her takedown requests as harassment.

On July 5, Blanchat received a mailed letter from Beecher Principal Kathy Russell Beck. The principal elaborated on why Blanchat had been blocked from viewing the school’s Instagram. The letter read in part: ​“When we face an issue or a challenge, we try to address it face-to-face, or over the telephone. Your apparent reluctance to use more direct means of communication or to respond to direct outreach — combined with the tone of your messages on social media — led to the decision to block your account. After review, we have unblocked it.”

Blanchat said she did not receive a call from Russell Beck.

The principal’s letter also described Faison as of July 5 as an ​“individual formerly associated with an affiliate organization that provides programming.” Faison did not provide a comment for this article.

Meanwhile, on June 20, state Department of Education Attorney Louis Todisco responded to an email that Blanchat had sent earlier in the month, stating that she had spoken with NHPS Asst. Supt. Vivianna Camacho about these issues.

Todisco wrote that the city’s public school district had committed in the future to “(1) honor your declining a release to post your daughter’s image on social media, and (2) not block your account so that you may verify that there are no postings of your daughter’s image.”

In her testimony to the school board in early June, Blanchat described Beecher staff’s actions as ​“intentional misconduct.”

“My legitimate takedown request resulted in being blocked on Instagram by the school and a teacher,” she recalled during her testimony.

Harmon told the Independent that the district doesn’t have a policy in place around whether or not public schools can block parents or other community members from viewing their social media accounts. ​“It hasn’t come up before, to my knowledge,” he said.

A similar matter did recently make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in March that elected officials can’t block people from their social media accounts if those accounts are used in government-empowered official capacities.

Blanchat told the Independent that she strongly believes that students and children ​“are deserving of privacy.” That’s one of the reasons why she told the school she doesn’t want photos of her child posted online. She also said her family has a ​“specific reason for why we do not want images shared, which we could have discussed with the school if they ever took the time to respond to our concern. But otherwise it’s private and the media release should have been enough.”

She raised broader concerns with the Independent that the school’s Instagram account has postings that include its students names, ages, and sometimes exact locations. ​“How many of them are too young to say no to a teacher recording them?” she asked.

Blanchat suggested that the district create a committee charged with writing policy for how administrators and teachers uphold media releases and educating staff on media literacy and internet safety.

“I did not invite you to do anything but teach and keep my child safe under your care,” she continued, in reference to her kid’s school. She said this whole problem could have been resolved in January if the school and district had communicated clearly with her.

Blanchat added that, because of this experience, she plans to transfer her child to a different school in the district in the fall. She said she hopes the district will prioritize increasing awareness about privacy for minors and parental rights.