The Lawrence public school district’s Internet filter prevents students and teachers from having computer access to the Larryville.com community discussion forum.

Filter software blocks district computers from being used to join the 6-year-old forum in which people share opinions about a variety of issues, including decisions by city, county and school officials.

Doug DuBois, editor of Larryville.com, said he wasn’t aware the district’s screening software put Larryville.com out of reach to students and staff.

“I think it’s pretty rare when there is content on Larryville that I’d consider harmful,” he said.

Mike Eltschinger, supervisor of instructional computing for the district, said special software had been blocking the site since at least Oct. 1. Choking access to the site was an administrative decision, he said.

Janice Nicklaus, the district’s executive director of educational programming, said it was her understanding there were complaints about the site’s content.

“I would assume that it’s because there is inappropriate language,” she said.

DuBois said blocking access to all of Larryville.com wasn’t necessary if the objection was about language contained in individual posts.

The Lawrence School District installed an Internet filter on its computers in July to comply with the Children's Internet Protection Act, a federal law that applies to all U.S. public school districts. Martha Oldham, librarian at Lawrence High School, shows what the district's Internet filter, SquidGuard, looks like Monday afternoon.

“Banning the entire site is ridiculous when it could be programmed to deny certain pages or posts deemed offensive,” DuBois said.

The district’s network is monitored by SquidGuard, a free filter the school board voted unanimously in May to install throughout the district.

It’s designed to block access to sites related to child pornography, obscenity and other materials harmful to minors.

In this case, district staff manually added Larryville.com to the banned list of sites. When a student or staff member calls up Larryville.com, a squid appears and informs the user of the situation.

Supt. Randy Weseman said he wasn’t a fan of Internet filters.

However, he said, the district had to install a “technology protection measure” on its network by July to comply with the Children’s Internet Protection Act. The federal law applies to all U.S. public school districts.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal technology grants to the Lawrence district would have been jeopardized if the district hadn’t complied, he said.