BISD sessions on Internet safety today
The Brownsville Independent School District and U.S. Attorney’s Office are teaming up to help parents protect their children from Internet predators, cyber bullies and other dangers of the digital age.
The district’s Parental Involvement Department will present two programs on Internet safety — one from 9-11:30 a.m. today for parents of middle and elementary school students and the other from 12:45-3 p.m. for parents of high school students. Both sessions are at Christ the King Community Center, 2255 Southmost Blvd.
"We’re going to have a preventative discussion about here’s what has happened and here’s what could be happening," said Megan Paulson, an assistant U.S. attorney in Brownsville who will present the two sessions.
"We’ll talk about cases we have seen locally and areas for parents to look out for when their children are online," Paulson said. The discussion will be about various tricks online predators use to lure their their victims, as well as numerous ways besides computers that children can get on the Internet, including cell phones.
Rosalva Larrasquitu,
"Parents need to have an awareness of the different ways kids are using the Internet," she said. "Parents need to know what are the capabilities of that phone — and they need to make decisions about parental controls on the computer as well as on their phones."
The sessions also will include discussion of BISD’s procedures for a lockdown in the event of an emergency or an intruder on campus.
"Every campus has a protocol on lockdowns and they have to follow those procedures," Larrasquitu said. "We’ve gone over the protocols before but we need to do it again periodically because of the new parents coming in."
