Camas High School (CHS) students and teachers have faced issues with Blocksi, CHS’ new content filtering program for the Chromebooks, since the beginning of the year. 

In an email sent out to CHS staff in May 2024, the Camas School District (CSD) announced their decision to switch over from GoGuardian to Blocksi. CSD listed reasons for the switch, including annual savings of $20,000 and an increased number of features for teachers. 

CSD Teacher On Special Assignment Meghan Sammler further explained CSD’s decision to switch to Blocksi.

“We’re always just looking to make the best decision, be the best stewards of our resources, our funds, and also look at features,” Sammler said. “We have some budget issues, so looking at how we use our funds is really important right now.”

The money saved from the switch to Blocksi is repurposed to better serve the students but does not leave the technology category.

“Our tech funds are a different bucket of money than what would pay for a teacher,” Sammler said. 

Sammler listed examples of what the $20,000 saved annually might go towards, such as larger televisions or video editing software for students. 

“[We are] always reinvesting to [create] the best experience we can in the classroom,” Sammler said. 

Some students and teachers have found that the AI content filtering program occasionally blocks educational resources unnecessarily. CHS Spanish teacher Jessica Obradovic has recently faced problems with Blocksi that prevented her from teaching parts of her curriculum. 

“I noticed students in [my] classroom… cannot access normal things like Quizlet or even our online textbook, which is kind of our only option to access our curriculum, especially outside of school time,” Obradovic said. 

Obradovic recounted a recent instance in which her students could not access a geography game that she wanted them to be able to use as a study guide for an upcoming quiz.

“Blocksi [blocks] things by category,” Sammler said. “If something is being blocked that you don’t think should be

blocked, we need to hear about it in the tech department.”

Although the tech department does its best to correct issues promptly, teachers often have to wait days for an educational resource to be unblocked. Obradovic contacted the library and the tech department but could not unblock the geography game by the date of her class’ quiz. 

Students have encountered instances of Blocksi interfering with their academic success in the past several months. Many expressed frustration with the inconvenience of navigating around the program. 

“I was doing research [for a project] and Blocksi was blocking the research for the project,” CHS junior Natalie Krause said. “It was literally going through and blocking everything… I went to like 4 different websites and all of them just kept getting blocked.”

Other students have encountered instances of Blocksi blocking academic necessities such as Clever, TurnItIn, and even Skyward in recent days.

“My teachers and myself find problems that restrict us from doing our daily tasks,” CHS junior Romi Korenev said. “It’s frustrating when me and my peers have to deal with the consequences… when it’s completely not our fault.”

CSD officials stand by their decision to switch over to Blocksi. 

“The company has been really responsive [to] feedback from our tech department and from our teachers,” Sammler said

Teachers and students can work to improve Blocksi by continuing to provide valuable feedback regarding what the program chooses to block.