The warning reinforces what one elementary-school teacher learned the hard way: Last week she was suspended and recommended for firing after a WCNC reporter showed CMS officials her Facebook page listing "teaching chitlins in the ghetto of Charlotte" as one of her activities. Four other teachers faced milder penalties for pages that showed "poor judgment and bad taste."
Even if such postings are done on personal time and intended for limited viewing, they can diminish an employee's professional reputation and cost them the respect of colleagues, students and parents, Chief Operating Officer Hugh Hattabaugh wrote.
Sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Match.com "provide the public with varying levels of access into the private lives of CMS employees. Therefore, please understand that postings made to these websites may become part of the public domain in the same manner as a newspaper ad or a magazine article would be," Hattabaugh wrote.
WCNC, the Observer's news partner, found the pages by searching Facebook for people who listed CMS as their employer. The teachers in question did not use a privacy setting that would have blocked general access to their information. The station found photos of female teachers in sexually suggestive poses and a black male teacher who listed "Chillin wit my n---as!!!" as an activity. CMS would not specify which of those pages brought discipline.
The suspended teacher meant for only her friends to see her page, according to John Gresham, a Charlotte attorney she has retained. The teacher was employed at Thomasboro Elementary, where most students are minorities from low-income homes. The teacher has the right to appeal her dismissal; the Observer is not listing her name because the case hasn't been resolved.
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