Judge Orders WI Teachers to Hand Over Personal Emails
By Joan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 4/10/2008 1:27:00 PM
The Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) this week filed a motion for reconsideration of a judge's decision to release emails written at work by five Wisconsin Rapids School District teachers.
In late March, Judge Charles Pollex ruled that Donald Bubolz, of Vesper, WS, was within his rights when he asked the district for all emails the five teachers wrote in April and March 2007. The teachers, who have not been named, then filed for an injunction, resulting in the recent circuit court decision.
Bubolz, 61, whose work with church groups brought him in contact with the local district's schoolchildren and their parents, says his petition was based on their complaints that the five teachers were sending personal emails when they should have been teaching.
"[The teachers were] not following policy,” Bubolz says. “Our students deserve more than this.”
Bubolz, a former construction industry worker with no children in the Wisconsin Rapids schools, declined to name the teachers or their school. "I'm not out to get anyone fired," he says, emphasizing that he had specifically asked the judge to keep the teachers' names and any financial information contained in the emails private.
Jina Jonen, an attorney for the WEAC—an advocate for education professionals—says the teachers have emphasized that they did nothing wrong and that they were in compliance with school district policy that says teachers may use email for personal use.
While WEAC is not contesting the release of emails relating to school business, the attorney says, "there were a handful of emails to their spouses or their kids or neighbors or friends that had nothing to do with school, that were purely personal.”
"Don said these teachers were 'rotten apples,'" Jonen says. "He indicated to the judge that he was going on a 'fishing expedition' to see if these teachers were doing their job."
Jonen says the emails were not "records" as defined under Wisconsin's public records law. That argument, she adds was supported by the state attorney general's office, which has said that content, not format, determines what is public record.
Even if the emails are deemed a "record" under the law, "You always have to do a balancing test," Jonen says. "We argued that there's really no public interest in disclosing because it shows nothing about school business."
For that reason, WEAC's motion for reconsideration by the circuit court has asked to limit the release of the teacher emails only to their times and dates and not their content.
