The creation of — highly realistic but artificial images, audio and video — used to require high-powered equipment and considerable skill. Now, with in generative artificial intelligence, any kid with a smartphone can make one. 

Adolescents, mostly teenage boys, are exploiting readily accessible deepfake tools to create graphic images and videos of female classmates, causing profound distress and disruption in across the country, from , California, to , New Jersey. High school students outside Seattle were photographed by a classmate at a school dance who then “undressed” them on his phone and circulated supposedly .

The impact could be significant. Experts that so-called deepnudes can hurt victims’ mental health, physical and emotional safety, as well as college and job opportunities. Comprehensive data is lacking, but documented incidents indicate that this is a troubling trend that demands immediate attention. 

While anti-child pornography statutes, Title IX regulations regarding online harassment and revenge-porn laws already exist, these measures were not designed to handle the unique challenges posed by deepfake technology. 

Schools, educators and law enforcement are scrambling to respond to this new phenomenon. In some cases, students have been harshly disciplined, but 13- and 14 year-old boys for engaging in impulsive behavior on phones their parents have handed them is not an appropriate, just or sustainable solution. It is incumbent upon adults to make the technological world safe for children.

The Biden administration has rightly technology companies, financial institutions and other businesses to limit websites and mobile apps whose primary business is to create, facilitate, monetize or disseminate image-based sexual abuse. But these steps are largely symbolic and will result in voluntary commitments that are likely unenforceable. 

The U.S. Department of Education is to release guidance on this matter, but its track record of issuing timely — and, frankly, practical — information is underwhelming. 

It’s also impractical to rely on slow-moving legislative processes that get caught up in arguments about for offending images when students’ well-being is at stake. As any school leader can tell you, laws only go so far in , and the ambling through Congress don’t address how K-12 institutions should respond to these incidents. 

So, where does that leave us?

Educators need support and guidance. Schools have a critical role to play, but to expect them to invent policies and educational programs that combat the malicious use of deepfakes and protect students from this emerging threat — absent significant training, resources and expertise — is not only a fool’s errand, but an unfair burden to place on educators. 

Communities, districts and schools need statewide strategies to prevent and deter deepfakes. States must use this summer to bring together school administrators, educators, law enforcement, families, students, local technology companies, researchers, community groups and other nonprofit organizations to deliver comprehensive policies and implementation plans by Labor Day. These should, among other things:

• Recommend curriculum, instruction and training programs for school leaders and teachers about the potential misuses of artificial intelligence and deepfakes in school settings;

• Update school-based cyber harassment policies and codes of conduct to include deepfakes;
  
• Establish discipline policies to clarify accountability for students who create, solicit or distribute nonconsensual, sexual deepfake images of their peers;
  
• Update procurement policies to ensure that any technology provider has a plan to interrupt or handle a deepfake incident;
  
• Build or purchase education, curriculum and instruction for students and families on digital citizenship and the safe use of technology, including AI literacy and deepfakes;
  
• Issue guidance for community institutions, including religious programs, small businesses, libraries and youth sports leagues, to promote prevention by addressing this issue head-on with teens who need to understand the damage deepfakes cause;
  
• Issue detailed guidance about how schools must enforce, the federal law that bans sex discrimination, including sexual harassment, in schools.

Is this too ambitious for state government? Maybe. But there is no choice. As the grown-ups, and as citizens of a democracy, we have a collective responsibility to decide what kind of world we want our children to live in, and to take action, before it’s too late.

Over the last 13 years, 10 teachers and public school employees in Hawaii have sought restraining orders against a single parent they say has repeatedly harassed and threatened them. 

According to court documents, the parent has called school employees a “pregnant dog in heat” and a “Fucken Micronesian Idiot,” told a principal he had hired a private investigator to investigate them, made shooting and throat-slitting motions at another teacher while driving past them, joined his son’s online class without warning and insulted the principal, and threatened to find a DOE employee on a hiking trail to confront her and her family. 

Yet very few of the restraining orders filed against the parent have been approved. While police have struggled to serve him papers for a court hearing, judges and state officials have also been wary of infringing on the right of a parent to participate in their children’s education.

The parent is “an individual with a belligerent personality who communicates with verbal intimidation and swearing in order to control and overpower any attempt to having a civil conversation with him,” James Halvorson, a supervising deputy attorney general, wrote in a letter to a former Department of Education worker in 2021. But, the letter added, the Hawaii Department of Education has “an obligation to communicate with him regarding the education of his children.” 

The parent, Jerome Costa, declined to comment for this story.

DOE’s 13-year struggle to curb Costa’s behavior illustrates the difficult balance schools must strike between protecting teachers and respecting parents’ say in their children’s education.

The Covid-19 pandemic only exacerbated this dilemma, with parents losing trust in the public school system and teachers taking the brunt of families’ frustrations with online learning, said Amy Klinger, director of programs for the Educator’s School Safety Network. In an  conducted in 2020 and 2021, nearly half of teachers said they wished to or planned to quit their jobs because they felt unsafe, threatened or unsupported at work. 

Hawaii lawmakers are now  that would increase protections for school workers. By requiring DOE to develop additional procedures for responding to harassment claims, advocates say the bill establishes clear expectations for the protections and support teachers should expect to receive when dealing with unreasonable parents. 

But separating unwanted parent behavior from harassment can be a difficult task, Klinger said, adding that she doesn’t know of any states or districts that have developed the perfect policy response. 

“Clearly we want to protect teachers. 100%,” Klinger said. “But also, we have to not treat parents as though they are the enemy.” 

The legal limitations of harassment

In Hawaii, harassing an individual is considered a petty misdemeanor, punishable by up to 30 days in jail and a fine of $1,000. 

But charging a parent with harassment can be a difficult task for teachers. , harassment includes repeated calls which intend to “harass, annoy, or alarm” the recipient and have no legitimate purpose. 

Families often have legitimate reasons for contacting schools, even if employees feel that their communication is unwanted or overly-aggressive, said attorney Megan Kau. 

Even if a parent repeatedly contacts a school directing calls at a specific teacher, Kau added, the courts may not consider these calls a form of direct communication that constitutes harassment. 

Teachers can also file temporary restraining orders which, if granted, can lead to a court hearing granting them a restraining order for a maximum of three years. It can be easier to make a case of harassment when filing a temporary restraining order, but teachers would still need to prove that a parent is contacting them unnecessarily, Kau said. 

Lindsay Chambers, DOE’s former communications director, sought criminal harassment charges against Costa in late 2020. Chambers said she received threatening phone calls and voicemails from Costa that began in 2019 and continued until 2021. 

“Mrs. Lindsay Chambers, that female genital, that female dog – yes, I’m using definitions of what she is,” Costa said in one voicemail, according to an internal complaint Chambers filed while working in the DOE. “Anytime your husband wants to shake my hand and talk to me like a man we can do so. I would love to have this conversation with him about how his wife is such an evil person.” 

Chambers said she interpreted this voicemail as a threat that Costa would fight her husband and harm her family, adding that his calls constituted “intense psychological harassment” over three years. 

But the Honolulu Prosecutor’s Office declined to press harassment charges against Costa. 

In a 2020 call with Chambers, deputy prosecutor Dwane Tegman said it would be difficult to pursue her case because Costa was consistently contacting DOE’s communications branch, rather than communicating with Chambers directly. 

While Costa’s calls were inappropriate, Tegman added, they also served the purpose of communicating his concerns about his children’s education. 

“He does have a partial legitimate purpose, at least, in complaining about his kids’ education,” Tegman said in the call, which Chambers recorded and shared with Civil Beat. 

Chambers ultimately received a restraining order against Costa in January 2021. At that point, Chambers had moved from DOE’s communications branch to the department’s Covid-19 response team, and said Costa had no reason to contact her. 

Chambers left DOE a year later. 

Uncertainty Around Internal Policies

When it comes to employee harassment, DOE has limited legal options, said Ken Kakesako, who serves as the director of the department’s policy, innovation, planning and evaluation branch. 

“We are not law enforcement,” Kakesako said in a legislative hearing last month. 

DOE isn’t able to file TROs or press harassment charges on teachers’ behalf. If administrators receive harassment reports, they can pursue solutions such as developing safety plans for employees or reporting incidents to the police, said Deputy Superintendent Heidi Armstrong. 

DOE is also able to ban individuals from entering school campuses for a year. If the harasser is also a parent, the department will develop a plan explaining how an individual can remain involved in their child’s education, Armstrong said. 

In spring 2022, DOE issued a letter to Costa banning him from entering all school campuses and department offices. While Costa’s spouse was allowed to attend in-person meetings and contact schools on the family’s behalf, Costa’s communications with DOE were supposed to be limited to speaking with a department official over the phone for an hour every Friday. 

But school workers filed nine more TROs against Costa after DOE issued its letter. According to the TROs, Costa continued to repeatedly call school lines to criticize and threaten employees.

Principals and administrators have a responsibility to remedy situations making teachers feel harassed or threatened, said Andrea Eshelman, deputy executive director of the Hawaii State Teachers Association. But, she said, DOE typically handles harassment incidents on a case-by-case basis, leaving educators unsure what protections they’re entitled to. 

“That’s just a general obligation of an employer, you need to make sure that your employees are feeling safe,” Eshelman said. “It’s not super clear on what steps those administrators have to do.”

A new provision in HSTA’s contract explicitly requires principals to take “appropriate action” when responding to harassment reports, including developing safety plans, initiating internal investigations or supporting employees in pursuing restraining orders. 

If teachers believe their administration hasn’t appropriately responded to their harassment claims, Eshelman said, HSTA can initiate a grievance process. 

The union filed three harassment-related grievances against DOE within the first two months of the school year. Eshelman said the three cases were not related to one another but would not share more in order to protect teachers’ privacy. 

DOE communications director Nanea Kalani said the department doesn’t consistently track statewide harassment reports from employees. 

The search for legislative solutions

Other states and school districts have also searched for ways to protect teachers without discouraging parents from participating in their children’s education. 

A California bill introduced last year would have made it a misdemeanor for parents to interfere with teachers’ lives by harassing or threatening them outside of school. The bill passed the Legislature but was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. 

“The tenor of our country’s political conversations is alarming,” Newsom said in his . “Nevertheless, we need to be cautious about exacerbating tensions by implementing additional laws that can be perceived as stifling parents’ voices in the decision-making process.”

Now, Hawaii lawmakers are grappling with similar concerns. 

Drafted by Chambers and two teachers, House Bill 1651 requires DOE to develop more standardized policies to address employee complaints of harassment. Under the bill, procedures include reporting all harassment incidents involving physical threats to the police within 48 hours and providing workers with paid leave to attend court proceedings relating to TROs and harassment charges. 

“It’s clear that the status quo is not sufficient to protect the employees,” said Rep. David Tarnas, chair of the House Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee. 

A  introduced in 2022 included similar provisions but also proposed to create a new crime, the harassment of an educational worker, which would be a misdemeanor. Under the bill, harassment would cover any acts which aimed to “impede the government operations of an educational worker” and would disrupt or interfere with a school’s functions. 

Punishment for a misdemeanor includes up to one year in prison and $2,000 in fines. 

The 2022 bill failed to pass, with advocates and parents submitting hundreds of pages of testimony against the proposed policy. Many argued the bill’s definition of harassment was overly broad and would target parents who frustrated or annoyed teachers. In particular, parents of special education students argued that the bill would punish them as they advocated for better services and accommodations for their children.

HB 2125 “chills parents (from) accessing skills and educational success. It would affect parents in their communications with the DOE and BOE and intimidate them,” Cynthia Bartlett, a member of the Hawaii Autism Foundation, said in written testimony. 

An early version of HB 1651 also included a provision raising the harassment of school employees to a misdemeanor but that part was removed after legislators decided existing state laws on harassment provided enough protection to teachers. The bill has passed through the House and is now awaiting a hearing in the Senate. 

Even with these changes, Chambers said she believes the bill will establish important accountability measures for DOE. By requiring DOE to track and document all harassment claims, the bill can help the department identify parents with a history of harassment and aid employees in making a stronger case for restraining orders and other legal protections in the future, she added. 

“This is a service that cannot turn people away, cannot turn children away,” Chambers said. 

This story was published originally on Honolulu Civil Beat.

As one of 27 district leaders on a national COVID recovery task force, Virginia Beach schools Superintendent Aaron Spence helped craft a list of the issues his counterparts across the country would need to consider as they reopened schools.

But during one meeting earlier this year, he said he interrupted the conversation with a more personal request. “When are we going to talk about us?” he asked the group. Spence, like , had been enduring a virtual battering on social media over when to bring students and teachers back to the classroom.

If he delayed reopening, critics would suggest leaders in neighboring districts were more capable of managing the return to school. And if he celebrated students getting back on campus, “80 people would say, ‘You’re killing our children,’” said Spence, who took a year-long break from Twitter for his peace of mind. “There was no way to win.”

Spence resurfaced on social media last month to congratulate this year’s graduating seniors. But with the uproar over critical race theory now eclipsing the frustrations over school reopening, the tenor of online conversations hasn’t necessarily improved. have called it quits this year than normal, including those in the nation’s top three school districts. But the vast majority of superintendents will be back this fall, and many are stepping into the role for the first time. With the as the school year gets closer and breaking out at board meetings, district leaders are bracing for another turbulent year.

“People are just so angry right now,” said Susan Enfield, superintendent of the Highline Public Schools near Seattle. “I think that sometimes stepping away from social media is the healthy, appropriate thing to do — especially if you’re a parent or have children in the district.”

Over the past year, Enfield, who has been Highline’s superintendent for nine years, has become a virtual shoulder to lean on for district leaders across the country. She mentors new superintendents and teaches in a leadership certification program for AASA, the national superintendents’ organization.

But she has faced plenty of criticism on her own. This year alone, she’s been called everything from an “f-ing idiot” to “a know-it-all c-word,” she said. Some of the heat even came from within.

“I had staff accuse me of for wanting to bring children back at their parents’ request,” she said, adding that 45 percent of parents polled wanted to return in March, almost half of them non-white. “I felt that was a mandate.”

Then in April, the district’s central office was vandalized. The words “Racist superintendent. Hazard pay. Reparations now” were sprayed across the front of the building in red and black paint.

‘Things that used to seem like regular good jobs that had a public face now seem like dangerous, high-risk activities.’ —Sarah Sobieraj, sociology professor at Tufts University

Aside from moments when she dreams of being a personal shopper at Nordstrom, Enfield said she still loves the work and has learned to separate the political nature of the position from her role as a district leader.

“The work of serving children is a gift, even on the hard days,” she said.

While she hasn’t left social media, Enfield refrains from getting into back-and-forth exchanges with those tweeting hateful comments. And she advises other leaders to put their health and family first.

‘The intensity of the emotion’

That’s what Candace Singh, who has led the Fallbrook Union Elementary School District near San Diego since 2011, had to do after receiving messages about reopening schools that she said her and her family’s safety. Warnings, such as “You better watch out,” and “Watch your back,” unnerved her enough that she closed her Twitter account for three months. She said she needed to “get her sea legs again” and balance her role as a mother, daughter and wife.

“Because that language is now accepted in the public discourse, where it never would have been tolerated before, [it’s] very unsettling for people in my position,” she said.

At the height of the crisis, she was on Zoom 12 hours a day and never left her kitchen counter. She started to feel like she was getting sick, so she set some boundaries around her time. She limited the amount of news she would follow and began to take daily walks around her neighborhood near the ocean, listening to “meditative” music and podcasts and catching up with friends and family by phone.

“If you’ve been a superintendent for any length of time, you’re used to this being a job that comes with criticism. You’re making decisions that not everyone will agree with, nor should they,” she said. “This took that and literally lit it on fire because of the nature of the intensity of the emotion and deeply political direction this took.”

‘When tempers flare’

In Tennessee’s Shelby County Public Schools last year, Superintendent Joris Ray received on social media regarding his decision to keep schools virtual in the fall. One tweet sent to him said, “You deserve to be tortured in the worst way possible,” and someone showed up at his house to challenge him over the issue, according to the district. Last month, the Guilford County Schools in North Carolina for Superintendent Sharon Contreras and other district leaders because of a spike in angry emails, voicemails and posts on social media — one of which Contreras, in uppercase letters, of running a “far-left, anti-white racist, indoctrination gulag” and being “an aficionado of BLM thugs,” officials said.

The outrage in many communities over critical race theory has made district leadership even more perilous in recent months, with some administrators even leaving their jobs due to .

But district leaders aren’t the only ones feeling under attack.

“The temperature and rhetoric is too hot on all sides,” said Erika Sanzi, the director of outreach at nonprofit Parents Defending Education and an outspoken opponent of what the organization views as indoctrination in the classroom. “The threats are not unique to district leaders — parents who oppose ideas and practices infected with critical race and gender theory are also being threatened, doxxed and harassed. All of it is wrong.”

And the angry tone on social media over masks, policies for transgender students and school equity initiatives is spilling over into .

One man in June for disorderly conduct at a Loudoun County Public Schools board meeting, where members addressed transgender student policies. In Utah, a Granite School District meeting ended early when a dozen disruptive, burst in, yelling obscenities at board members. And Sanzi pointed to Michelle Leete, from her position with the Virginia state PTA last week after shouting “Let them die” at a rally outside a Fairfax County school board meeting, in reference to parents opposed to critical race theory. The Virginia PTA on Saturday that Leete wasn’t speaking for the organization and that they didn’t “condone the choice of words.”

‘They tie your salary to what they think you should tolerate.’ —Candace Singh, superintendent of the Fallbrook Union Elementary School District near San Diego

Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, a nonprofit consulting firm, said his team has noticed an increase in concerns about the safety of school and district leaders at board meetings, and because of the “broader context of violence in public places” in recent years, some districts have increased security.

Those who continue to engage with the public on social media “can take their time to pick-and-choose how to respond to threats,” he said. “But when tempers flare at in-person meetings, they may have less time or no time to think through a laundry list of potential ways to respond.”

Sarah Sobieraj, a sociology professor at Tufts University, sees the hateful comments toward superintendents as part of of threats against officials over the past year, including those working in and . While both men and women in leadership positions have felt the impact, women in the public eye, she said, have borne the brunt of the backlash and the commenters often discredit them because they are women.

Taking a break from social media or having a staff person monitor the posts are among the ways leaders handle the onslaught, “but you can take all of the precautions that people might suggest, and still find yourself on the receiving end of this kind of harassment,” said Sobieraj, whose father was a district superintendent.

The public might not have a lot of sympathy for leaders who earn six figures and are expected to make tough decisions.

“They tie your salary to what they think you should tolerate,” Singh said.

But Sobieraj said attacks on social media are now a factor leaders weigh when deciding whether to go into public service — one that can discourage women and minorities from pursuing those roles.

“Things that used to seem like regular good jobs that had a public face now seem like dangerous, high-risk activities,” she said.

Enfield added it’s important for district leaders to find ways to stay above the fray because superintendent longevity is a key to improving student achievement. One reason is because superintendents hire principals and well-prepared school leaders contribute to growth in student learning.

“One of the least sexy, least talked-about factors in districts that are getting results is leadership stability,” she said.

But she said superintendents also need to know when to step away. She’s decided that the 2021-22 school year will be her last in Highline, but the burden of leading schools during the pandemic was only part of the reason. She hopes to continue serving as superintendent in another district.

“Every leader has a shelf life,” she said. “You figure out when your shelf life comes before someone else figures it out for you.”

Lead Image: The district office in the Highline Public Schools was vandalized in April. (Highline Public Schools)