Independence Elementary School

FHSD Social Media Comment Guidelines

Welcome to the Francis Howell School District's fan page. This page is monitored and maintained by the FHSD Communications Department and is a means of sharing experiences, making suggestions or chiming in on educational issues or conversations. Please visit our official website at www.fhsdschools.org for more information on the Francis Howell School District. Please note that this page is not intended to operate as a traditional public forum. Comments are subject to the guidelines contained herein. Please also note that by making comments, users are speaking as individuals, and their speech does not reflect the endorsement, sponsorship, position, or expression of the Francis Howell School District. Comments are welcome as a means of sharing experiences, suggesting improvements, responding to polls/questions or engaging in the conversation. However, commenters must comply with Facebook’s Community Standards. Additionally, in order to ensure that exchanges are informative, respectful and lawful, we will not allow comments that are:

Off Topic. We will exclude comments not related to the subject of the particular post. Comments focused on promoting a commercial enterprise, or selling a product or service will be removed. If you disagree with a post, we’d like to hear from you. We do ask that you refrain from personal attacks or being disrespectful of others. Threatening or abusive language, including “fighting words”, will not be tolerated. Laws that govern the use of copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, etc., will be followed, and the misuse of intellectual property through commenting on this page will not be permitted. Additionally, we will not allow comments that: suggest or encourage illegal activity or activities; that identify an individual staff member, unless the staff member identified is the one making the comment; or that identify an individual student, unless the student identified or his or her parent/guardian is the one making the comment. Inappropriate Language. Inappropriate comments will be deleted, including, but not limited to, comments containing: profane or provocative language; hateful, racially or ethnically offensive or derogatory content; threats; obscenity; or, pornographic content or sexually explicit language. Defamation (including Libel or Slander). Blatantly inaccurate information constituting defamation, including libel or slander, will be removed. Political Advocacy. Under Missouri law, FHSD is prohibited from using public funds to support or oppose the passage or defeat of any ballot measure or the nomination or election of any candidate for public office. The use of the District’s Facebook fan page for this purpose could be seen as an indirect use of public funds. Accordingly, any comments that would cause the District to be in violation of this law will be removed. FHSD reserves the right to disable the ability to comment on a particular post for any reason. This may occur when the post is made, or at a later time if all the comments on the post are in violation of these guidelines and the violations are continuous. FHSD further reserves the right to delete comments and/or ban users from commenting if these guidelines are not complied with. Any comments that do not follow these guidelines may be removed and the user will be notified of the violation. If a user violates these guidelines three (3) times, then the District may block the user from commenting on the page. Users who violate these guidelines may also be reported to Facebook. As stated, this page is monitored and maintained by the FHSD Communications Department. However, it is not possible for such monitoring to occur at all times. It is therefore possible for comments to be posted which are in violation of these guidelines and not immediately removed or otherwise addressed. FHSD will use its best efforts to identify and address such comments in a timely manner based on available resources within the Communications Department.