If they can’t be transparent about it, then it’s not something you want them to be doing.
The Wisconsin Court of Appeals on Wednesday said the school district cannot withhold its alumni, recreation department, and Momentum newsletter recipients email lists from parents who want to offer an alternative to the district’s support of “The Talk: A Necessary Conversation on Privilege and Race with Our Children.”
The three judge panel slapped down Mequon-Thiensville’s argument that sharing the lists would hurt its ability to communicate with parents, or would be too much work to share.
“In short, the District wants to be able to use government resources to collect and utilize these email addresses to promote and advance the particular ‘community outreach’ issues and positions of District (government) leaders while denying others in the community the opportunity to utilize the e-mail addresses to share differing viewpoints,” the judges wrote. “[Wisconsin’s Open Records law] does not tolerate utilizing taxpayer resources for an ideological or political monopoly.”
Tom Kamenick, President and Founder of the Wisconsin Transparency Project which was a part of the legal case against Mequon-Thiensville Schools, said Wisconsin’s Open Records laws are very clear.
“The attorney general has released consistent guidance for decades that government distribution lists – whether emails, phone numbers, or mailing addresses – must be released to record requesters,” Kamenick said. “It’s good to now have a published decision binding on courts and record custodians around the state.”
I am curious as to how “far” this reaches? I sign up for the “Infinite Campus” app with my personal credentials so that I can get updates on my child’s homework, grades, and communication with teachers. I am not 100% certain what happens with my email address with this, if the school has the right to add my email to other mailing lists. This is almost a necessity to have these applications with all schools these days. I would NOT want that shared with anyone else. But I also don’t think that the school should use these type of services for promoting any sort of agendas.
But, if I voluntarily signed up for another mailing list with the school, then I probably don’t have any recourse on this legally, and that is something that should be disclosed to anyone who signs up for the mailing lists.
I wonder where the line is drawn.