Office of Instructional Technology

Internet Filtering System

The Great Neck Public Schools utilizes a Palo Alto content filtering system to maintain compliance with the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) and to implement our district's Computer Network and Internet Acceptable Use policy. The sophistication of our current system enables us to have a high degree of granularity with regard to Web site access, allowing us to differentiate filtering for different groups of users, implement different filtering rules at different times of the day, enable bypass accounts, force Google's SafeSearch filter on, and create complicated filtering rules that customize the filter to meet the disparate instructional needs of students and staff. See the documents and links in the right-hand column for more information.

The enormous task of categorizing and indexing a global network of the size and scope of the Internet to maximize instruction and learning is made even more challenging because of the imperfection of filtering systems and the dynamic nature of the medium. As a result, we encourage users to provide feedback about Web sites they believe are blocked or allowed incorrectly in order to optimize our filtering system by customizing it to meet the educational needs of our students and staff.

If you have any questions about our filtering system, or if you are a staff member with a filtering request, please submit it via e-mail to Justin Lander, District Technology Director. Please include your name, school, the Web site address (URL), a short reason why you believe the site's status should be changed, and whether the request applies to our student filter, staff filter, or both. We require 24-hour advanced notice so teachers are encouraged to plan ahead, but oftentimes requests can be fulfilled during the same day they are submitted.