Education

School social media director fired after correcting student's misspelled tweet

By Bob D'Angelo
Jan 15, 2017

A woman who served as a social media coordinator for a Maryland public school system said she was fired on Friday after sending a tweet that corrected a student's spelling, the Frederick News-Post reported.

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Katie Nash was managing the Twitter feed for the Frederick County Public Schools. On Jan. 5, one student tweeted to the school's account, @FCPSMaryland, asking to close schools "tammarow."

Nash responded through @FCPSMaryland, “But then how would you learn how to spell ‘tomorrow?’ :)”
The tweet drew more than 1,000 retweets and likes and even earned a hashtag, #KatiefromFCPS, according to the News-Post.
Nash and the student exchanged other tweets and the student insisted that he didn’t mind the lighthearted spelling correction. Nash told the News-Post that she was initially told not to tweet anymore, but still had access to the Twitter account. She added that she continued to tweet out school updates, but at the end of the school day Friday she was told she had been fired. She began working as the school district’s web experience coordinator in November, the News-Post reported.
The tweets have since been deleted.
Michael Doerrer, a district spokesman, told the News-Post that Nash was no longer employed with the school system, but he couldn’t comment on the circumstances.
 “As a new employee, I think I sort of would have expected that there would have been some counseling or some suggestions on how to improve,” Nash told the News-Post. She added that she had not received any direction about the tone of the account.
“Any social media manager is looking for increasing engagement, and that’s sort of the expected parameter,” she said. “I think a conversation about how we engage with students would have been completely appropriate and I would have welcomed that.”
One group has organized an online petition to urge the school district to give Nash her job back.
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Bob D'Angelo

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