GLOVERSVILLE & JOHNSTOWN — Local schools may soon view digital photos posted online as evidence of violation of student athletic codes of conduct.

Since the explosion in popularity of Internet social networking Web sites, such as MySpace.com and Facebook.com, some students have posted photos of themselves or other students breaking the law and/or school rules, prompting the school districts in the Glove Cities to take action.

Gloversville Enlarged School District Board of Education Vice President Peter Semione said district administration officials have asked the board to consider a new policy to deal with the issue of some students posting photos of themselves or others violating the district’s athletic code, which prohibits underage alcohol consumption.

“The gist of it is we would consider using [those digital photos] posted on MySpace as well as someone seeing them or reporting them [to initiate disciplinary action],” Semione said.

Greater Johnstown School District Superintendent Katherine Sullivan said her district did have one incident recently where a photo of a student posted on the Internet was brought to the attention of officials. She said school officials contacted the student’s parents and ultimately the student admitted to the conduct portrayed in the photo. She said the matter would have been much more difficult to pursue if the student and the student’s parents had denied the authenticity of the photo and decided to fight the administration.

“We have not had that happen yet,” Sullivan said.

Perry Paul, GESD school board president, said he was forced to miss most of the district’s last school board meeting for medical reasons and has not yet seen the proposal to expand the athletic code into cyberspace. He said the school board will need to be very careful when crafting such a policy because digital photography can be easily manipulated, making it difficult or impossible to prove the authenticity of a photo that appears to portray illegal behavior or rule breaking.

“Can you take a MySpace photo and [change it] with Photoshop? Is it a correct photo, is it a cropped photo? Who knows?” Paul said.

Semione said the GESD school board is aware of the potential difficulty of using evidence gathered from the Internet to enforce the provisions of the student athletic code. He said any policy approved by the board will first be vetted by the district’s legal counsel.

Sullivan said a committee is working on the issue of possibly expanding the GJSD athletic code of conduct to include photos posted on the Internet but is also approaching the issue cautiously. She said students’ access to the Internet and advanced computer technology has opened up many challenging areas for school administrators, including the proliferation of self-made underage pornography and cyber-bullying.

At its Oct. 2 meeting, the GJSD school board is expected to vote on a policy clamping down on all forms of bullying throughout the school district, including online bullying. “The policy talks about the regular bullying we’re all familiar with, the teasing and the taunting and the name-calling and the hitting and the kicking and the spitting and the pushing and the spreading rumors, and [expands it] to prohibiting Internet bullying, also referred to as cyber-bullying,” Sullivan said.

“This would include the use of instant messaging, e-mail, Web sites and so forth.”

To educate students about the possible dangers of the Internet, Sullivan said, she has invited the Johnstown Police Department to speak to students regarding Internet legal issues and to educate them about possible risks to their safety and reputation posed by the World Wide Web.

“Posting on the Internet is not as private as some students may think,” she said. “[Those images] go out to a variety of people. Students need to be educated that MySpace is not ‘their’ space. It’s out there and some damaging results can occur.”

Semione said he’s not that familiar with MySpace but his son, a junior in high school, is, and he intends to ask him about the Web site before voting on a policy that addresses its use.