kitchen table math, the sequel: timeline

Saturday, March 17, 2007

timeline

8:25 pm Friday, March 16, 2007
Irvington school board sends mass email threat to "consider" legal action against any parent who employs the District's Top Secret email list. (context: No one has used the Top Secret list since last December. It is now March.)

10:45 pm Friday March 16, 2007
Ed reads email, comes upstairs, reports threat.

10:47 pm Friday March 16, 2007
Catherine gets out of bed, goes downstairs, switches on kitchen light.

10:47 pm Friday March 16, 2007
Christopher, attempting to sleep on family room sofa because Martine, stranded by sleet storm & failure of snow plough guy to show, is sleeping in his bed upstairs, starts yelling. "I'm trying to sleep! I'm trying to sleep!"

10:48 pm Friday March 16, 2007
Catherine: "I don't like being yelled at!"

10:48 pm Friday March 16, 2007
Christopher: "I'm trying to sleep! I'm trying to sleep!"

10:49 pm Friday March 16, 2007
"I don't like being yelled at!"

10:50 pm Friday March 16, 2007
etc.

10:51 pm Friday March 16, 2007
Catherine discovers cause of yelling offspring: C. is trying to sleep in family room and kitchen light is on.

10:51 pm Friday March 16, 2007
Kitchen light off.

10:54 pm Friday March 16, 2007
Catherine forwards Board email to K DeRosa of D-Ed Reckoning fame, requesting legal advice: Can you get me a legal opinion on this? Can the Board threaten to sue parents for using its Top Secret email list? Thanks--- Catherine

11:58 pm Friday March 16, 2007
Ken:

They have no cause of action.

First, you are under no contractual obligation to keep their email list secret. You are not bound by their policy; they are. To the extent that they can claim a trade secret interest, they have not taken reasonable precautions to keep it secret.

Second, the list is now in the public domain through inadvertent disclosure. So if there was a protectible interest, it's now gone.

Third, they failed to take reasonable precautions to keep their list secret and failed to take reasonable measures to mitigate the damage once they discovered the list had entered the public domain. The list has been out for months now and they've taken no corrective action until just tonight. That is not reasonable action.

Once the genie is out of the bottle you can't put him back in.



That was fast.

email from the Board
Tex weighs in
timeline
pushback
Posted by at

3 comments:

Ben Calvin said...

These kind of vague "scary legal" threats rarely go anywhere. And you are clearly in the right on the law.

The problem is that if it proceeded, you have to pay for your lawyer, while they're playing with house money.

On the other hand after this I wouldn't feel any need to play nice. Did you use this list to invite all of it's members onto the Irvington Parents forum? You could use that as your public base if you wanted.

And if the district proceeds it could make for some jucy radio, TV and news stories. Do you have a local cable news entity? Or are you covered just by the big New York City stations?

March 17, 2007 at 12:51 PM
Catherine Johnson said...

On the other hand after this I wouldn't feel any need to play nice. Did you use this list to invite all of it's members onto the Irvington Parents forum? You could use that as your public base if you wanted.

Everyone used the list.

After the vote someone sent out a message to the whole list (I don't know who it was -- it may have been a "yes" vote).

Then everyone started chiming in and talking back and forth.

So at least a dozen people used it, maybe more.

I purposely didn't take part in that conversation because I knew it was going to tick people off who would suddenly be receiving lots of email traffic of parents arguing back and forth about the bond (which in fact happened).

No one has used the list since December.

The board is way out of line.

So is the superintendent; this has her fingerprints all over it.

March 18, 2007 at 9:20 AM
Catherine Johnson said...

This is SOP in our district.

The administration maskes continual power grabs as a matter of safety, security, and, now, privacy.

March 18, 2007 at 9:20 AM

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