Greece Board of Education members had the tables turned on them last Tuesday, having to answer questions they likely have never been asked publicly before.

Have you ever discussed online what your body looks like? How many times have you looked at online porn? Do you visit dating Web sites?

Those questions, said Vince DiPaola, who posed them to the board, came from a survey Greece administered to students in the fall. The Greece parent and Lakeshore Community Church senior pastor is asking the district to recall the survey responses, destroy them and rebuild trust with parents who feel deceived.

Greece was one of dozens of area districts to participate in the "Survey of Internet and At-Risk Behaviors, ” developed by Samuel McQuade, a professor and graduate program coordinator at Rochester Institute of Technology's Center for Multidisciplinary Studies. He has been surveying nearly 30,000 local youths about their online habits for the last few months. The goal is to find out how much kids are victimized online, victimize other people and how both can be prevented.

But DiPaola says the questions in the survey were suggestive and personal and have no educational value. In August, the district mailed home a letter to every K-12 household. Parents could opt out by Sept. 15. The short survey was administered to students in September and October, according to Superintendent Steven Achramovitch.

Participating in the survey, he said in the letter sent home to parents, "will help us determine the next steps for instruction and intervention related to student and staff safety."

A second letter says students would be asked about their Internet, computer and other electronic device use, their age, gender and types of computers they use.

"Depending on their age, children will also be asked questions about their online social networking activities, sexual conduct, drug and alcohol use, and other criminal or at-risk behaviors while using the Internet," the letter reads.

Students' identities and the information they provided would remain completely confidential, Achramovitch wrote. But DiPaola takes exception to that, saying that students were asked to list their first name and last few digits of their phone numbers. So much for anonymity, he said, when it wouldn't be too difficult to figure out the first three numbers, since Greece has a couple of exchanges.

DiPaola, who said he was provided copies of some surveys and students' responses from a teacher, said he was approached by teachers and parents who were concerned about the questions. He checked out a Web site given by Achramovitch in the letter before agreeing to let his daughter take the survey.

The questions on that, DiPaola said, don't come near what students were asked, leaving the parents he's spoken with feeling deceived. Sample questions in the letter home included:

• Have you seen things on the Internet that made you uncomfortable? (Grades K-1)

• Do your parents watch you when you use the computer? (2-3)

• Where are you when you go online? (4-6)

• Have you downloaded music that you did not pay for? (7-9)

• Have you bullied or threatened someone online? (10-12)

McQuade defended the study, saying the information is critical to helping kids safely navigate the online world.

"It's not like you can actually systematically monitor their online actions so the next best thing we can do is ask them," McQuade said. He called it the largest and most comprehensive cyber-habits study done to date.

"I know from the social-science literature and as a former computer crime program manager with the U.S. Department of Justice that we don't have a clear view of the ways in which children can be victimized online, and sadly, as it turns out, victimized oftentimes by other children in the absence of adequate parental supervision and education and positive role modeling," he said. 

McQuade hopes to use the information to help districts make better decisions about their curriculum and increase community awareness about the potential issues the Internet creates for kids.

"We really want to discern what's going on, figure out what we should do and then figure out how we should go about that," he said.

The survey has been developed over the last 15 months. Last January, McQuade made contact with area superintendents. School leaders, he said, asked him to extend the study to kindergarten. Out of that discussion came the Rochester Regional Cyber Safety & Ethics Initiative, www.rrcsei.org.

And there were checks and balances before the study went out, McQuade said. RIT has a number of requirements he had to meet and between 35 to 50 different experts reviewed the study before it went out to the districts, he said.

In the letter from the district, it says if a student is uncomfortable about the survey questions, or doesn't want to answer, the supervising teacher or staffer will stop it and report the incident to school officials if warranted or required by law.

That didn't happen in one case, DiPaola said. According to him, some teachers have told him they felt pressured to give out the survey and students felt pressured to take it. The most troubling student response he's seen reads: "I felt the survey I took was stupid because why do they need to dig in to our personal business? I felt uncomfortable giving out the info but I did it anyway because we had no choice."

The district had 546 children opt out. Its approximate enrollment is 13,300. Additionally, children could opt out of the survey right before it was administered, said school spokesperson Laurel Heiden.

There's no way parents can claim to have been blindsided by the survey or its intentions, McQuade said. Notification letters were mailed home. Parents were referred to a Web site where they could review questions. McQuade also presented the project to a Greece PTA, he said.

"It's really important and we are doing it in a responsible way. There's just no question about it," he said.

And so far, the research has been "fascinating," McQuade said. Society and lawmakers have focused on adult sex predators as a major threat when in reality, they're a small part of cyber crimes, he said. The vast majority of unwanted sexual solicitation online comes from other kids, he said.

The data will be helpful in Greece, Achramovitch said. The district plans to look at any trends and patterns that emerge from it. The data could affect how the district makes future decisions regarding technology and access to certain Web sites. The only cost to the district was postage in mailing the letters home, he said.

"Do we as a district at various levels need to respond differently in terms of how we're teaching kids and what we're teaching kids in terms of Internet safety and appropriate utilization of the Internet?" he said. "There are a variety of areas we can go into depending on what the survey is telling us."

DiPaola is asking for all the responses to be recalled and destroyed, for McQuade to send out a certified letter attesting to that, and for the district to pledge not to offer such a survey again. "We have to have a letter of trust but trust I think has been broken for a lot of parents," he said.

Future studies will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, Achramovitch said. "Anytime we do a survey we'll be looking at the appropriateness of that survey – just who we're going to send it to and we'll look at how we'll administer," he said.

Colleen M. Farrell can be reached at (585) 394-0770, Ext. 265, or at cfarrell@mpnewspapers.com.