A horde of students broke a school rule — one that kids break all the time. 

Eighty-three Pennsylvania students were suspended for a day after they used a proxy filter to bypass the school’s Internet filters.

The program, called Ultrasurf, is free and available for download.

The website promises Ultrasurf will help users:

• bypass firewalls
• encrypt activities
• circumvent censors
• mask IP addresses, and
• surf anonymously.

Of course, parents are outraged at the mass suspension and have blamed tech security employees at the school, according to local news reports.

But the Brentwood Borough School District stands firm on the suspensions, explaining that the use of proxy filters violates district policy as well as the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA).

Makes sense, considering a Federal Communications Commission order recently clarified rules that affect schools’ E-Rate funding. (You can learn more about the specific requirements here.)

Steps to take

Fighting the proxy-filter war might seem like a losing battle. But you can take steps to prevent widespread use of this particular proxy:

• Ask IT to add http://ultrasurf.us/  to your school’s web filters
• Come up with a specific plan on how staffers should respond if students use Ultrasurf at school, and
• Continue to educate students on the basic habits of responsible tech use. (Additional help is available here and here.)

Extra help: Many students use home computers to download proxy filters and store them on flash drives, which can later be used at school. So it might be a good idea to tweak your policy to include prohibiting the in-school use of flash drives with proxy filters stored on them.

Tags: proxy filters, tech challenges, Web filters