About 20 students at McKay High School were suspended last week because of their apparent “retweeting” of a Twitter post about a teacher’s alleged relationship with her students.

The incident remains under investigation by school administrators, Principal Sara LeRoy said, and could lead to disciplinary action against more students.

Twitter is among the most popular social media sites worldwide. It allows users to send and receive messages, known as tweets, that are up to 140 characters long. The system allows users to search for and interact with other users, and to retweet and/or favorite the tweets of others.

The suspended students’ offense falls within the realm of cyberbullying, LeRoy said, which, according to the Salem-Keizer Public School student handbook, is against policy.

LeRoy wouldn’t discuss the details of the tweet, but described it as a “disparaging remark about a staff member.” Those found to have retweeted it were disciplined. LeRoy did not say how long the students were suspended for.

“It’s essential for us to have a safe and orderly learning environment,” she said. “Those kinds of behaviors aren’t tolerated.”

Despite the disciplinary action, the tweet in question could still be read Tuesday and had been retweeted 40 times and marked as a favorite 57 times.

According to the district’s Student Rights & Responsibilities handbook for 2013-2014, cyberbullying is an offense similar to hazing, harassment, intimidation and menacing and will not be tolerated by “student to student, staff to student, or student to staff.”

Disciplinary actions include progressive sequence of consequences such as contact with a parent, a conflict management meeting, in-school suspension with a special project, suspension for up to 10 school days, with a special project, referral to law enforcement, conference with a parent prior to return of student to school, continuing suspension with recommendation for expulsion, evaluation at parent’s expense.

Consistent discipline was taken against students involved, LeRoy said, and parents of students who were disciplined have generally been understanding.

Patty Davis, whose daughter is a junior at McKay and was one of the students suspended, was told Thursday that her daughter would be suspended from school on Monday and Tuesday. She contends that the disciplinary action went too far, and that her daughter only “favorited” the tweet.

“It’s a learning experience for these kids, obviously,” Davis said, “but it doesn’t merit two days of suspension. That’s going to be a blemish on her record.”

The tweet was posted Feb. 11 by an account called Salem Confessions. It alleged that a female teacher flirts with her students.

The account is maintained anonymously and features so-called confessions submitted by students within the Salem-Keizer School District. The account is primarily gossip, with many of the tweets being vulgar or sexual in nature. Most of them target students — the majority of whom are not named — but a few tweets name teachers.

Students can then use their own Twitter accounts to favorite or retweet individual confessions.

Information from any source alleging a possible inappropriate relationship between students and a teacher is a highly sensitive matter to school officials.

The Salem-Keizer School District, like thousands of districts nationwide, has written policies specifically to protect students from potential abuse by teachers or other authority figures. Many of those policies are written also to protect faculty members from situations that even give the appearance of inappropriate behavior.

There are strict policies that spell out that school staff are to keep relationships with students on an adult-to-child basis, and teachers and staff go through recurring training to ensure they are aware of the policies.

At the same time, school teachers and administrators are mandatory reporters of child abuse if they have a reasonable cause to do so.

The president of Salem-Keizer Education Association, the teachers union, said she was not aware of the tweet or suspensions before Tuesday, and she did not know whether the teacher’s job would be in jeopardy because of such a tweet.

“My advice to the teacher would be to let the administration take the role it needs to take and that is doing the investigation and following through with what they need to follow through with,” Kathleen Sundell, president of SKEA, said.

Sundell said she doesn’t think an investigation would be any different because it involves a teacher.

“Cyberbullying is cyberbullying,” she said, “regardless of who it is.”

She said she didn’t know whether the disciplinary action was appropriate because there are many factors involved, including students’ behavioral history.

If students are saying things that are untrue, it doesn’t matter if it’s on their own device or the school’s, Sundell said. “It’s not OK for students to say things that are not true.”

The “confessions” type of Twitter account is not unique to Salem or Oregon. Portland media outlets reported just last month about a similar account in Clark County, Wash., also featuring high schoolers. Several school districts responded to say they don’t monitor sites that aren’t sponsored by the districts, but that they will investigate cases of bullying or harassment.

Anonymous confession accounts also have been reported in Cowlitz and Lewis counties in Washington.

The suspension of the 20 students is the largest disciplinary action taken this year at McKay, LeRoy said.

“Our No. 1 concern is to make sure we have a safe and orderly environment for students to learn and teachers to instruct,” LeRoy said.

Reporter Laura Fosmire contributed to this report.

jdewitt@StatesmanJournal.com