Schools on facebook?

I'm a big fan of using technology for education.  I know our kid's schools have online resources that are purpose built for extending the campus environment home.  I think the software they use is called infinite campus.

My kids can work on a project at school and then come home and open the same word doc or power point at home and keep working.  It's pretty cool.

As for your scenario I think it sounds like a good way to communicate with parents and families, but I can almost guarantee you'll have somebody who freaks out about it... "you know predators use facebook to find children and I don't want my billy on there"  Then it gets messy.
To take it a step further I saw this article a few months back about a new law in Missouri making it illegal for a teacher to friend a student on facebook.  yikes.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43992926/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/t/missouri-makes-teach-student-facebook-friending-illegal/

So, if it were me I'd talk to the parents and see what they think.  If you get a consensus then I'd say go for it, but keep it private and locked down to parents only.

I would likely be okay with it if you made it a closed group that required an invite by an "administrator".  (I'm assuming that you can do that.) 

As a teacher, I would make sure that you had a district (or school, if private) approved release form and that you have it signed from each parent before you put pictures of that parent's child on the web.  This will help to indemnify you from any future legal action that said parent may feel it necessary to bring.

Stinks that you have to think like that but you can't be too cautious.

My previous school had a website and each teacher managed their own webpage (supervised by the tech professional of course). My current school has a website but it only provides teacher email addresses, forms, school calendar etc. Nothing special from each class. I'm going to have to look into this more. Facebook is just so easy but you are right, not everyone wants to join.

I wouldn't just start a page without speaking to admin first. I was interested in parent input as far as if it would even be something they would look at.

Again, no photos of children, no names of children etc. This is purely hypothetical at this point. I'm just brainstorming on BT .

My current position is in a private school that is associated with our church. The church has a facebook page but I couldn't find the school.

My sister is a librarian at a charter school. They have a facebook page. They use the page to make announcements and for basic social media. I don't believe they post student photos, though.

Our school district has an expectation for all teachers to have a BLOG.  You can do the same things as facebook and those that aren't on facebook can still go to the site.  Another plus about the BLOG is that you can set it up so that comments can only be seen by you unless you choose to post them.  Make sure you have written permission to post pics of students as previously stated. 

It sounds like your primary purpose for this is pictures and announcements.

Yahoo Groups are free and can be set up by invitation only. 

I would stay away from Facebook for this.

This sounds good. I didn't even know there was such a thing. I'll check into this.