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Schools

ACLU Gives D37 One Week to Correct 'Censorship'

Avoca Superintendent Joseph Porto says the district needs more time to act smartly.

The American Civil Liberties Union launched its national "Don't Filter Me" campaign April 11 by sending letters to schools in Michigan, Texas, Pennsylvania and Virginia to raise awareness of schools the group claims blocking lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender-related websites from its students. Additionally, the ACLU called for students to come forward who had felt discriminated against.

One of the students who spoke up was a 14-year-old Avoca School District 37 student, according to John Knight, the ACLU's LGBT and AIDS Project director. That complaint has now ignited a disagreement between Avoca and the ACLU on whether or not the school was being intentionally discriminatory toward what sites it was allowing students and staff to see. The ACLU said the school was aware of the censorship in April, but the district says it was only following the filtering standards set by other school districts, and was unaware that the filters were blocking LGBT-related sites.

Following the student's testimony, the ACLU sent Freedom of Information Act Requests to Avoca on April 20. The queries revealed that a category, "Education.lifestyles," had been blocked from Avoca's Internet network, which in turn censored gay lifestyle sites like the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network.

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"We sent a demand letter letting them know to fix it," Knight told Patch.

But, according to Superintendent Joseph Porto, the district has never received complaints from students, staff or parents regarding the issue. Porto also told Patch that the ACLU hadn't given the district sufficient time to react to the accusations.

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"I was taken aback by this because I was informed about this ACLU accusation by the Tribune reporter," Porto said Thursday, of the call he got earlier that day. "We have a history of being open and progressive in this area. And to be accused of this is just utter nonsense."

District 37 switched its filtering software in 2010, according to information given to ACLU via a FOIA request, which the ACLU provided to Patch. After the switch, school officials went through the filtering system to select categories to block students from accessing. One of those categories was "Education.lifestyles" which encompasses LGBT interest sites, according to the FOIA'd information.

"When you're putting in a new filtering system there’s a hundred decisions that you have to make," Porto said. "And since this was a new site for us, we were using templates that were used by other school districts." One of the categories neighboring districts blocked was "Education.lifestyles," Porto added.

"This was not a deliberate decision to block anything in the arena of LGBT rights or those kinds of lifestyles," Porto told Patch.

But part of the problem with filtering companies, Knight said, is that they censor anything that’s positive about gay community but leave in negative sites.

"The bottom line is that schools should be looking at this issue themselves. We shouldn’t have to bring to everyone’s attention," Knight said. "They [Avoca] knew and the superintendent knew and I’m sorry that they are upset about the public attention to the problem."

The ACLU has given Dist. 37 until May 16 to take action regarding the issue, otherwise the organization could file a lawsui, according to Porto. But, the superintendent said the week deadline isn't enough time for officials to act smartly.

"Now that it’s been brought to our attention we’re going to do a nice job of researching this," Porto said, "We want to know if we uncheck this box what kind of sites the kids will have access to."

Porto added that the issue might be taken up by , who will be replacing him as superintendent June 30.

Stay tuned to Patch for more updates from the community. Read a of the letter Supt. Porto sent to parents Thursday afternoon above. 

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