Board Member Email Addresses

At the December 16 school board meeting, one topic of discussion was the PTA school directory and information contained therein. Specifically, the board president, Leandra Sedlack, wanted to know why private email addresses for board members were printed in the directory and where these email addresses came from since they were supposedly "private." Several board members implied this information came from a particular person on the board which was not the case.

First off, there were several reasons this information was included in the school directory. To begin with, it was to maintain a look of uniformity throughout the directory. Secondly, this information was included as a means for parents to communicate with the board members whom they elected to represent them. We all know how important communication is in our school district. Just last spring the communication action committee met for several months to discuss ways to improve communication throughout the district. In addition, email is a less intrusive way to reach someone and since the home phone numbers of board members have always been included in the directory, email provided another means whereby these people could be reached without being intrusive. Finally, the directory was proofread by several people including school board member Beth Tegtmeier and superintendent, Mark Fredisdorf at the November PTA board meeting.

At least three people were concerned enough to raise objection to and refuse to publish an advertisement they did not like; however, they never made ONE mention or objection to the board members' email addresses being published (which they clearly saw) until now.

In an effort to clear the air on where these email addresses came from, we'd like to show you how easy it is to get a person's email address. It's a little thing called GOOGLE!

Look at the last few entries on this page:
http://us.yhs.search.yahoo.com/avg/search?fr=yhs-avg-chrome&type=yahoo_avg_hs2-tb-web_chrome_us&p=leandra+sedlack

Another board member has a Facebook page that is open to the public. On her information page, you can view the name of the company she owns. Then, if you google the company name, you will come up a supplier directory. A third of the way down the page is her company name and her email address.

Two other email addresses came from a mass email that was sent out last April.

From: CRAZY4CHOC
To: CRAZY4CHOC
BCC: Tegtwins2
Sent: 4/5/2009 6:53:43 P.M. Central Daylight Time
Subj: April 7th Board of Education Elections

Hello, Friends:
As a candidate in the upcoming election, I would like to provide you with some information regarding recent campaign literature that has been distributed. Please take this opportunity to read the following (a duplicate attachment is also included), and forward on to individuals who may be interested. Please don't hesitate to contact Mark Mirabile, Leandra Sedlack, or myself, should you have any questions or require additional information.
Thank you,
Patti Essig
Candidate for Pleasantdale School District 107 School Board

Another email address was found here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=rick+rigley&start=10&sa=N but we chose to use a different email address so there would be no confusion between boards that he serves on.

Other board members' email addresses were acquired from serving on a committee together.

These are just a few examples of how easy it is to get information from the internet. As Superintendent Fredisorf said last year at Internet Safety Night, whatever you put on the internet is a permanent record and available for all to see.

So next time the school board would like information, maybe they should ask those directly involved before jumping to conclusions and insinuating something without ALL the facts.

Why all this talk of email addresses? It's all about control. Enough said!