Below is the email Comal ISD superintendent Andrew Kim sent to parents this afternoon about social media use on campus.

Prior to the Christmas break, I shared with you some of my observations about student engagement, discipline, and mental health issues, and hinted at our desire to address some of the negative student behaviors resulting from them.

I believe that it is now time to recalibrate our processes to reestablish student behavior expectations in our classrooms and hallways. Over the next several months I will engage with parents, teachers, administrators, staff, and students on certain specific steps we will take to reaffirm what it means to be an engaged and productive Comal ISD student.  

As a first step to help support our teachers and reduce classroom distractions, we are blocking access on our guest wi-fi network to social media sites such as Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram starting tomorrow at 8 a.m. In addition, we are blocking access to many lesser-known social media sites such as 4Chan, 9Gag, Reddit, and Triller, which can serve as backdoors to questionable content. We will also soon restrict students to Google as the only accessible search engine due to our ability to better control the results it returns.

Please know that these steps we are taking are only one part of the equation. While we can restrict what a student can access through our guest wi-fi, we do not control a student’s personal device nor the content that they can access using a data plan that you provide. As such, please help support our teachers by talking to your child about when it is – and is not – appropriate to access social media during school. I also encourage you to please take time to regularly check your child’s phone and what they are accessing on the internet.  

Andrew Kim