An independent consulting group has found that Woodbury Schools did not intentionally block certain political websites for students.
The Trifection Group, a technology consulting firm, was contacted by Woodbury’s Board of Education after a high school senior discovered that the school district’s computer firewall blocked several conservative and religious websites, but not several liberal web sites. Some of the blocked sites included ctgop.org, Vatican.va, and the website for the National Rifle Association. Sites such as ctdems.org and plannedparenthood.org were not blocked.
"The firewall, well it was very one-sided at what it blocked and what it was unblocking,” Andrew Lampart, agraduate of Nonnewaug High School, said.
Last week, The Trifection Group presented its findings to the Board of Education.
"The district did not participate in any type of intentional censorship of political or really any other sites,” Trifection President and CEO Gregory Dandio said.
Trifection’s report also outlined some deficiencies in Woodbury’s Web filtering.
The report found that the district “did not have in place a written procedure for the review of sites” and “the review procedure which the district was using was not inclusive of all the stake holders.”
"We also feel that school administrators and other educators in the district should be in the loop of making the final decision of whether a site gets opened up or not opened up,” Dandio said.
Woodbury Schools are in the processing of executing all of Trifection’s recommendations. The district will also block all websites which have not yet been rated by the firewall provider, Dell Sonicwall.
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