Fleetwood’s Internet Filters Offer Flexibility for Faculty, Parents

Internet filters have become largely used in schools across America. Fleetwood uses these filters through a program called Lightspeed. 

The Children’s Internet Protection Act requires all schools to use internet filters that are meant to ensure the appropriate use of school-issued devices. 

An article by Todd Feathers and Dhruv Mehrotra, entitled “Inside America’s School Internet Censorship Machine,” analyzed the use of internet filters in Albuquerque Public Schools, in New Mexico. 

These schools used a restrictive program called GoGaurdian. 

“From January 2022 through August 2023 the district’s GoGuardian filter blocked 4,335 network requests a day, on average, according to the data provided by APS,” Feathers and Mehrotra wrote. 

Fleetwood’s program, however, is far less restrictive because the school can program it differently for the elementary, middle, and high schools. 

“High School students have the most ‘open’ settings, where Middle School is a bit more restrictive, as is Elementary,” Director of I.T. Mr. Thomas DeAngelo said. 

Lightspeed also allows for a blocked site to be unblocked. Once a teacher requests to unblock a website, that request waits for approval from the building’s principal. If the principal approves the request, IT will then open the site for that teacher’s use. 

In the future, parents can expect to have certain controls as well. 

“Parents currently receive a weekly report summarizing the student’s internet use for the week.  We will soon be giving parents a portal where they can manage internet access for the school device when the device is at home. This is a feature parents, particularly of middle school students, were requesting,” DeAngelo said. 

With the growing use of these filters, it will be interesting to see what the future holds for the Fleetwood Area School District technology.