About

Good afternoon,

At the end of September, we held our annual open house. The afternoon and evening sessions are meant to provide an opportunity for our parents and guardians to visit campus, meet their child’s teachers, and hear about expectations for the class. As we have learned over the past few years, there has been a need to change and transition to ensure we are meeting the needs of our families. We understand that everyone is busy and that not all are able to attend the open house, but as we start to plan for next year, we want to look at all ways to get as many families to attend as possible. In that vein, we ask that you take a few minutes to answer a short survey about open house so we can have your feedback.

Next week is Red Ribbon Week, a national campaign to encourage students to live drug-free. There are themes for students to participate in each day, and all are encouraged to sign a pledge in lunches to live drug-free. You can find more about the week, including the themes for each day, on our website and social media.

October is National Bullying Prevention month as well. We all understand the serious effects bullying can have on an individual. One of the most common types of bullying today is cyberbullying, which can take many forms. Social media's instantaneous and widely accessible nature makes it a powerful tool to engage communities in local education. Yet it can also cause harm to students, educators, and schools due to the lack of dedicated verification and reporting processes for federally recognized K-12 education institutions. To reduce that harm, Pinkerton Academy is joining a national call for major platforms to make it easier for schools to accurately represent themselves on social media and to report accounts that harass, intimidate, bully or otherwise negatively target students.

Administrators and school PR professionals spend countless hours each year reporting malicious accounts and posts—some that impersonate school leaders and spread false information, some that show embarrassing photos of students, some that use footage of other districts’ students to mischaracterize local schools—while often getting no or slow responses from platforms, school districts are struggling to prevent the harm these posts can cause to students and staff. Pinkerton is all too familiar with these issues. 

Over the summer the National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA) and the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) reached out to major social media platforms—including Meta (Facebook, Instagram), Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn—to assess their awareness of these challenges and to collaboratively identify potential solutions. Platforms’ responses to that outreach are shared in the new report Schools and Social Media: The Critical Need for Verification and Dedicated Reporting Processes, which also includes research illustrating the challenges faced by school districts today on social media. We encourage you to talk with your student about these issues and join the call for social media platforms to do their part in helping us protect our community from the harmful effects of such accounts.

Enjoy the weekend. 

Sincerely,

Dr. Timothy J. Powers
Headmaster