What is the policy on photos of children doing school projects?

General
1

I have tried to search for this, but I haven’t been able to find a clear answer.

There are some schools in my area that have projects in September where they post hundreds or thousands of observations, usually without labeling any of them, from a dozen or more difficult accounts.

If anyone has any advice on how to get these schools (really there’s just one that is generating most of it) l to adopt better practices, I would be interested, but my main question is: What to do with photos of schoolchildren?

Rarely are there “human” observations, they’re just identifiable kids showing up in the background of photos obviously taken for a school project. Some of these kids are pretty young, and since it’s not their proud parents posting the photos, there’s no way to tell if permission has been obtained.

Should these photos be flagged in some way, or is it none of my business?

Edit: There aren’t very many of these photos, maybe one or two a day where you can see more than just a hand or a foot.

2

In general these are tolerated unless it’s clear they’re used for bullying, etc.

3

Don’t children have to be over 13 to post observations

Since you know what schools are doing this, couldn’t you contact them and suggest that the teachers show the students how to crop a photo?

4

As much as it sometimes seems like the people running this are not paying attention to what they post, I have not seen any indications of bullying, so at least they are doing that much. I will refrain from flagging photos that don’t otherwise seem sketchy.

I think possibly the teachers are posting the observations on their own accounts on behalf of students who are too young to have accounts, while potentially having older students create accounts.

Cropping photos is the least of it. Most of these observations appear to be posted by teachers, and in addition to not cropping the photos or even checking to see if they are too blurry to see anything, they also don’t ever add identifications.

I have tried to contact the larger accounts that seem more likely to be run by teachers, but I haven’t ever gotten a response. Trying to contact them outside of iNat seems like a pretty big escalation, and it’s not my school district so I don’t know what channels to use. (Now that I’m an ambassador I guess I could reach out in that capacity. Has anyone tried that? But in any case, the main question in this thread has been answered.)