Education Law

"Especially the younger people coming up, that's how they are used to communicating," she said. "It's like with everything, you just have to have common sense."

But the line of appropriateness can get blurry. What if a teacher posts a picture of himself or herself holding a beer? He or she probably is of legal age to drink, said Kelli Hopkins, policy director for the Missouri School Boards' Association, but is that a picture the teacher really wants to broadcast to students and parents?

In the end, though, it really comes down to whether the questionable content is tied to the ability of a teacher to perform the job, Hopkins said. Her organization is still researching the issues of teachers and Facebook or MySpace profiles, and hopes to craft some guidance to administrators sometime this fall. The group has received about a dozen calls from administrators within the past few months, and it's been a frequent discussion topic of some listservs. There are all kinds of issues, including First Amendment rights, she said.

Trey Griggs, another Wentzville teacher with a public Facebook profile, thinks it would be a mistake for educators to be banned from something that is such a big part of their students' lives.

"That's where students live these days, and the last thing we want to do is remove ourselves," Griggs said. "I don't worry about my page, because they wouldn't see anything on there that they wouldn't hear about from me in class."