Beginning with the 2025–2026 school year, West Virginia law (Senate Bill 466) requires all public schools to provide annual instruction on safe and responsible technology use to students in grades 3–12 through the Safety While Accessing Technology (SWAT) Education Program. This program provides interactive lessons designed to teach students about digital literacy and internet safety.
These annual lessons focus on critical safety aspects of digital citizenship, including:
Recognizing sexual predators and human trafficking prevention. (Grades 6-12)
Understanding the risks of "sexting" or sharing explicit materials, and that these situations can lead individuals to consider suicide. (Grades 6-12)
Cyberbullying and identifying/reporting dangerous online behaviors. (Grades 3-12)
Safe use of online communication platforms and copyright rules. (Grades 3-12)
Because of the sensitive nature of these topics, we encourage parents to complete the lesson at home with their child. Please be advised that the lesson for grades 3–5 takes approximately 45–60 minutes to complete, and the lesson for grades 6–12 takes about 90 minutes. These lessons do not need to be completed in a single sitting and may be worked on over multiple sessions as needed. Skyll/CyberSWAT will be pushed to students’ ClassLink Dashboard on April 6, 2026. If not completed by April 20, 2026, this will be completed during school hours. If you choose to opt-out completely, please return the bottom portion of the Parent Opt-Out Letter to your student's school by April 2, 2026.
Our goal is to equip students with the tools to stay safe and make informed choices, strengthening their ability to learn and explore responsibly in an increasingly digital world.
All students (K-12) must participate in digital citizenship training annually. Parents may choose for their student to OPT out of participating in the Skyll/CyberSWAT course. An alternative digital citizenship curriculum (Learning.com) will be provided for students whose parents have submitted in writing to the student’s school for their student to OPT OUT. Our K-2 students will continue to use digital citizenship lessons from Learning.com.
Sincerely,
Superintendent David Banks