The GOP filed an open records request for reachers’ email, including some who ran for office, in what is seen as a fishing expedition intended to intimidate teachers.
The Republican Party of Kentucky has sent a wave of open records requests for the work emails of several teachers, including some who ran for office in November’s election — a move it said was a way to see if there was widespread misuse of government resources.
But some educators see it as an intimidation tactic.
While the GOP has declined to say how many requests it has submitted or for whom, at least some of the requests are for Democratic candidates who lost their elections.
“I think the reason they’re doing it is they want to make everybody afraid to run again, afraid to run against the establishment next time,” said Dustin Allen, a teacher in Laurel County who made an unsuccessful bid for the Kentucky House’s 87th District.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What about the emails in which teachers are communicating with parents about private matters concerning their children? This would be an invasion of the privacy of the parents and their kids, I would think.
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Wouldn’t this require school districts to individually comb through thousands of e-mails? How many education dollars will be spent on this partisan witchhunt?
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The teachers should contact the ACLU. We need to nip these fascist inclinations in the bud.
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FASCISTS are in charge. Sad Kentucky. I guess these fascists are running scared. That’s what fascists do. Fascists have only one solution to everything … CENSOR / BAN.
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Diane “Accusing” teachers of being “political” is another example of a failure to understand the role of teachers in a democracy. It’s NOT that teachers are supposed to influence children to THEIR way of thinking–as ideologues . Rather, it’s that teachers are supposed to teach children to become politically aware, so the next generation can know how important living under the rule of law and the Constitution (etc.) are, and to model that awareness in their actions.
By participating in political action, teachers in fact are exercising what the Constitution is about.
It’s just another example of IT-knowledge, narrowed down now to tech-knowledge, that, when over-emphasized, tends to over-shadow or even erase the import of the fuller development of children as persons, e.g., absenting instead of providing psychological, social, moral, political, spiritual challenges, along with history and civics education, educating children towards an ability to regard other persons and groups as persons, and to question and discuss shared issues in a civil manner—WE knowledge. It’s certainly a political kind of education we are talking about, but only as it educates children to be open to discussion and to think for themselves in a democratic environment–certainly, in that sense, a VERY political thing to do.
They apparently think teachers are not supposed to care about their own standing in the political field in a democracy? Look what’s missing in THEIR education. And it seems they think everyone else thinks the same as they do. CBK
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Roosevelt famously placed four freedoms at the basis of his 1941 state of the Union. Speech and religion, fear and want. Which of these have not been the victim of intrusion by one particular sector of our political body politic?
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Oh, Roy, don’t give away my Jan 11, 2019, post!
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Freedom?
Freedom of speech?
To blow the whistle?
Freedom to preach?
To read a missal?
Freedom from fear?
And also want?
Freedom to jeer?
At bon vivant?
Freedom to vote?
For D or R?
Freedom, I’d note
Is not , by far
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I used to work for a state funded organization. It was common knowledge that only company business was on our computers. We always felt that they could be inspected as they were not ours or paid by us. If you have nothing to hide–it should not be difficult to present them to the boss. Information on them were work related and privacy maintained. Use you own computer on your own time for private stuff…
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And I expect all teachers do. But to comb through teachers’ accounts, just looking for them to screw up,a nd not other fields, is discriminatory and furthers the concept that “teachers are terrible.” It’s ridciulous
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There is a large company/ personal overlap when it comes to issues like pension policy, a hot-button issue for educators running in recent KY elections– and how is pension et al personnel policy not work-related, anyway?
In addition: mgt monitoring/ interfering w/employee discussions re: employment policies comes w/n hairsbreadth of attempting to block freedom of speech, assembly, labor organization.
Most importantly: this is not parallel to mgt policy at your your state-funded co, or at these schools. This is a partisan organization– the Republican Party– demanding to review interoffice emails of state employees. Any school administrator w/a hint of a backbone would refuse such explicitly political interference w/its operations: it would immediately inject an unsettling atmosphere of mistrust between admin/ teachers.
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Now we know why Ms. Clinton liked her personal e-mail account so much. She knew about the GOP’s weaponization of FOIA.
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Teachers were repeatedly informed at Newark Public Schools that work e-mails were the property of the district and we were only to discuss school related business. We were not to engage with students on personal social media accounts.
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when teachers were very suddenly put on ‘admin leave’ during a scourge against veteran educators in our district, their entire email source was not only immediately shut down for them to use/see, but then often completely and unapologetically deleted. Teachers should be keeping a second cache for any important email information
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In Utah, the e-mails of all public employees is subject to this kind of scrutiny. This was originally put into law to prevent our political leaders from engaging in secret or illegal political actions.
I had a principal who told us to always make sure e-mails were deleted. She Explained that we also need to delete the trash or our deleted e-mails. Not sure deletion can be completely done anymore with the data storage that has been created. We use children’s first initial instead of names to protect student identity in e-mail communication. Most communications about children are done in person. All Union and political work is done on personal, private computers. But we have been warned to hold to the deletion rules when engaged in public discourse. The district has provided classes on personal computer security.
Legally we can engage in public discourse, but not in our roles as teachers. We are required to express that we are speaking as private entities. My thought, do political actions by snail mail or in person if you wish to preserve your rights.
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A lack of privacy is one thing; but the possibility of teachers being fired for lawful political participation is quite another. CBK
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Hillbilly Hitlers.
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Sorry but I cannot support the various posts here whose drift is, teachers know the score re: politicking on school time, if they get caught, their problem; if it’s on their school email they’re stupid. Spoken like true GAGAs. Way to blame the victims. Where’s the outrage at such policies? They reflect the utter collapse of employee protection of free speech, right to assemble, right to organize.
And where is it written that teachers who ran for Democratic office [unsuccessfully!] are a priori suspect of campaigning on school time/ computers & thus subject to the Republican Party reading all their emails– none of which are any of the Rep Party’s biz? We see from the article at least one successful Dem candidate’s emails were not FOIA’d– uh-oh, he/she has some political power, better skip him/ her.
Wow. KY teachers need to keep their backbone & add this to the list of next wildcat strike issues. Meanwhile as someone already said: contact ACLU [& NLRB?] pronto.
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Exactly! This kind of chilling of speech is disgusting, and for teachers to back it up in any was is frightening. Administration combing through teachers’ emails is frightening and should be a violation of policy. This is a true definition of a witch hunt.
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Teachers may be fired for theft of services and insubordination. Theft of services means using one’s work hours for other activities. Insubordination is refusal to comply with administrative directives. Alice no longer resides in Wonderland.
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Yes, we have limited First Amendment rights. But we still have some rights. One of which is to not be treated as if we are some sort of naughty children. To be treated with respect and dignity for the professionals we truly are. Unless there’s some kind of serious reason to check ONE person’s email (eg. pornography, fundraising, etc.), the powers that be should assume that we are doing what we are supposed to be doing. To imply otherwise by conducting a fishing expedition into hundreds, if not thousands, of teachers’ emails for no reason other than to catch people up in a witch hunt, is wrong.
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And in my state, we can be fired for not doing “other duties as assigned.” Which means an administrator could force us to do ANYTHING they want us to do, for how many extra hours they determine, for free, and we have no choice in the matter. THAT is the sort of thing that happens when teachers are treated as servants or children in the school. I don’t know if you want that, Abigail, but I sure don’t. And yet, my school ‘s faculty (not administration or counselors, mind you) is forced to cover an after school computer lab multiple times a year for no pay, and a teacher I know was fired for refusing to go to dozens of off-contract meetings for no additional pay.
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The patronistic attitude of officials in Utah was the reason I left.
I found it very difficult to stomach a bunch of dishonest, hypocritical incompetent idiots like Orrin Hatch telling the thoughtful, competent people in the state what to do.
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Patronizing, not patronistic
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Oh yuck, don’t get me started on Orrin Hatch. Blech.
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Public school teachers have limited First Amendment protections. They are employees of the state.
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The legal argument avoids the issue. Yes, public servants’ use of work time & eqpt may be examined at any time to ensure laws are followed re: no partisan politics on the public dime. It’s also the law that teachers may run for office.
This is about optics, partisan bullying, & teacher-bullying. Virtually all the 41 KY teachers campaigning were Democrats; the state’s office-holders are 2-1 Republican. The R party could have, for example, put all civil servants running for office on notice at the start of the campaign that they’d be monitoring compliance with applicable laws.
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Should have been patronizing
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We were always told that our school computers were the property of the school district. Anything we did on them could be scrutinized by the district since we were using their servers. It was a protection for us to know that our usage could be demanded in legal actions against us and/or the district. I am not sure how that applied to my personal computer when handling school tasks from home. We could sign in to the system used for writing IEPs and I could respond to work related emails as well. I always wondered if someone could then claim the right to investigate my personal computer.
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I could probably put together a list of politicians who have done time or faced fines for using public resources for political purposes. I don’t see why anyone else would think they were immune to such standards.
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No expectation of privacy is the legal term.
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As someone who once got caught saying something negative about an administrator on her work email to her colleagues, here is my advice:
It’s their system and they have a right to monitor your work emails. Supposedly all emails should be work related (I know, who wants to deal with more than one email account), so watch what you say and do, especially during the workday.
Your own private email, however, should be protected, unless you post something to the web where it is available to everyone in the world, not just your employer.
Then again, if they suspect you of downloading child pornography, all bets are off, but they still have to get a court order to seize your computer.
I speak from experience since a well liked colleague (and excellent teacher) was accused of inappropriate correspondence with one of his middle school students and his computers were seized for evidence. I’m not really sure of his guilt or innocence, but he left teaching and found another career path.
It’s great to be retired and be able to say what you think instead of “curbing your enthusiasm” on political or other controversial issues.
However, I do take issue with the government monitoring what we say, do, or think. It’s not like they are Santa trying to catch us being naughty or nice. The lump of coal they have in mind would not fit in a Christmas Stocking, .
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BUT, if someone in Kentucky did so much as mention support for a teacher that happens to be running for office, then that person is now “guilty.” This is an opportunity for the powers that be in Kentucky to rid themselves of a lot of pesky teachers. There are NOT pure motives in this search of emails. No one is suggesting that these teachers did anything wrong but question the authorities.
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Sometimes we take our freedom of speech for granted, that is until someone tries to use our words to inflict harm on ourselves and others. Horrible!
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In NY, the rules are pretty clear:
If you are communicating politics to an “equal” who truly cannot influence your job, then you can communicate politics. However, it has to be done during lunch, and if you use any work device to do so, you will always risk someone above you not liking your politics, resulting in mistreatment. While that bias is illegal, it is not preventable if you cannot see who has access to your e-mails. Of course, many districts have policies that are micro-specific about what you can and cannot discuss on work e-mails and during work hours. That’s fair, and they have the legitimate right to peer in on your devices if the device is work related and using work-related networks.
If you are in a work relationship in which someone in a higher position is talking politics to someone in a lower or subordinate position, then that arrangements is purely illegal because the law recognizes that supervisors can bias themselves against employees they evaluate and abuse their authority.
The best communication is to form private e-mails lists that are separate from the work-email networks. Once you are out of work hours and off work premises, you may act as a private citizen and advocate the way you want, period end of story. If an employee tries to use that against you, that will be a tsunami of a lawsuit that no individual will ever want to face.
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