Dear Parents,     

We have an ever growing problem with parents dropping their children off at school before supervision begins. No one is supervising on the school grounds before 8 a.m. It is very disturbing to see so many children here with no one watching them. I know that many parents think of our campus as a safe place to be, but it is only a safe place because our staff is very vigilantly watching over your children. We have our staff posted at various locations on the school grounds watching over our students beginning a 8 a.m. I, Mrs. Lucas, personally check these locations to make sure that these positions are manned by our teachers.

We need to be aware of the dangers that are in our society and  that we need to watchful. We have seen in many news reports over the last few years that it only takes a few seconds for a child to be abducted by a total stranger. This kind of situation doesn't always happen somewhere else. It could happen here also.

Legally parents are responsible for their children until our campus opens at 8 a.m., when we will assume responsibility for their care. "We want to try to resolve this situation in such a manner that would assist you in your endeavor to get to work on time."

We are offering a before-school care in room 3 with Mrs. Maenza. Mrs. Maenza will be there at 7:30 a.m. Every child that is dropped off before 8 a.m. will go to room 3 until the 8 a.m. bell rings.

Dear Parents, 

We have many concerns for the youth of America. We know that the future of America will be determined by the youth. It is our heart's desire to inspire our students to become outstanding citizens in the community.

We have an ever growing concern about some to the negative influences in the lives of our children. We have had a very busy year striving to maintain proper supervision of our students' personal web pages, such as MySpace.com. You may ask yourselves "Why is that your job?" It is our job to protect the reputation of our school and of Christ whom we try to serve. Our students are representatives of Oldsmar Christian School and the things they do reflect on the school and more importantly it reflects upon Jesus Christ. You only need to read the papers or watch the news to see how people's conduct on these sites has affected their employment, sometimes resulting in termination because their conduct reflected badly upon their employer.

There are other issues to consider such as the safety of our children. People misrepresent themselves in order to gain access to you child's page. Also our children are misrepresenting themselves in order to gain the attention of older more experienced adults for purposes we can only imagine. Sites like MySpace.com are very loosely monitored and the content is very vulgar, sexually explicit, promotes drug and alcohol use, violent content and exposes children to predators. That is not to say that there is nothing good on these types of sites but that the bad outweighs the good. Some of the conduct of our own students has been appalling. Students are using vulgar language, posting pictures that are sexually suggestive, even making threats to our staff that could have resulted in a criminal complaint being filed. Several students have had to be expelled because of these types of conduct. Many students are rebelling against our authority by trying to hide their sites or making them private or some other subterfuge, this conduct is the wrong response to authority.

Our policy on this matter is that no student attending Oldsmar Christian School will be allowed to have a personal website on MySpace.com or other secular online community. There are other websites that are monitored by Christian organizations that may be acceptable. The community FaithFreaks http://www.faithfreaks.com is an example of a monitored Christian based website community that would be acceptable.