I Am Looking into This

Using e-mail for board business? Check open-meeting laws
By Andrew Trotter
Andrew Trotter is an associate editor of Electronic School.

If you send an e-mail message to a member of the Seminole County (Fla.) school board, you're also sending one to Mike Barry, a reporter for the Orlando Sentinel. "Any e-mail that goes to the board goes to me," Barry says.
In December, at the education reporter's request, the school board arranged to forward all of its e-mail automatically to Barry and to his editor. Far from an invasion of privacy, the arrangement is really openness in government, says Seminole County's board president, Sandy Robinson. Florida's "Sunshine Law" gives the press the right to riffle through school board mail, and the Legislature has explicitly included electronic documents under that law.
Like their counterparts elsewhere who are taking advantage of e-mail and voice mail, Seminole County board members are working out the rules for the electronic age. They're weighing the implications of "sunshine" and open-meeting laws, as well as confidentiality and protocol.
Using district-owned laptop computers, the county's five board members can check their e-mail from home. "I've found personally it has cut down a tremendous number of phone calls," Robinson says. "It allows me to work on school board things on the weekend." She says most of the flow of information via e-mail and a new voice-mail system is between the board and the administrative staff, rather than among board members. For example, the administration will send e-mail to the board with the latest developments on a land purchase.
But Robinson says the board members are "painfully aware" that the sunshine law bars them from discussing among themselves in private "any issue that may come up for a vote." In electronic communication, they err on the side of caution: "If there's any concern, we just usually stop the conversation."

TRSP Review: This is interesting. Could you imagine The Real School Police getting every E-mail to the board. What would I have to complain about then? Nothing!!!!!