Coronavirus and Schools: Google Voice Accounts for Teachers
CORONAVIRUS UPDATE
We received a number of inquiries to the tech pool about whether there are concerns with teachers using Google Voice accounts, associated with their personal e-mail accounts, to provide phone access to students.
We are generally comfortable with the use of Google Voice in these circumstances.
One concern that has been raised is whether these personal accounts open the district to potential Right to Know requests. But we don’t see that as a concern. The Google Voice account is no more a risk than teachers having private phone numbers, which they all do anyway. At most a citizen could file a RTK request for a call list or voicemails – and even then it would only be a record if it were maintained by the district and it documented a transaction or activity of the agency.
We don’t believe that this is likely, and thus don’t have concerns with teachers using Google Voice accounts.