Executive Session Documents Leaked From New Richmond School District

At the October 26 meeting of the New Richmond school board, I asked the board about four school district-related documents currently posted on the www.ontheborderline.net web site. After first reading these documents, my view was that these documents contained information dealing with personnel issues and ongoing business negotiations concerning the school district. Considering the sensitive nature of these documents, I was curious about the following:

1. Had the documents been officially released to the public by the board and/or district?
2. If not, who had access to these documents?
3. If these were leaked, what steps is the board and/or district taking to stop the leaking of sensitive information to the public?
4. What is the penalty for releasing sensitive documents to the public without board approval?

I brought copies of the documents to the meeting. These documents were copied and distributed to board members. Some members said they had seen the documents posted on the web site. Others said they heard the documents were posted but had not actually seen them on the site. All members seemed to be aware of the document posting.

Board president, Lester Jones, told me my questions would be investigated and he would get back to me with the findings as soon as possible.

The links to the posted documents are:
10/18: Breaking News From New Richmond
10/26: Looking, looking, look what I found.

Document Access Discussed
During the regular session of the October 26, the board had a ranging discussion concerning access to, and release of, documents to board members and the public. Apparently,the topic was put on the agenda because of an incident where board member Bill Brennan Jr., accompanied by a member of the public, came to the school district office, removed bills and copied them. There was no question that Brennan, as a board member, has the right to view the billing documents. However, in this specific case, there was non-billing information of a confidential nature that should not have been viewed at this time by a non-board member of the public.

Brennan said he came to the district office with the citizen, because that person said they were intimidated by the process of getting copies of information from the district office. Board member Deanna Cook-Shannon told the audience that if they felt intimidated about getting information from the district, they were free to contact her and she would gladly help them with the process. Her sentiments were echoed by other members of the board. Cook-Shannon also pointed that most private businesses have a standard approval process for the release of information to the public and even company employees.

The board debate and discussed what the policy should be and it was eventually assigned to committee for farther discussion and review concerning the current board policy and legal interpretations.

Answers To My Questions
On October 28, I had a phone conversation with Board President Lester Jones. He provided me with answers to the questions I raised at the open forum on the October 26 meeting. He told me all of the documents I asked about should not have been released to the public. Neither the school board or the superintendent had authorized these documents to be released. Jones said the only people who were formally distributed copies of these documents were Superintendent Hitchens, the seven board members and the board's legal council. He said these documents had been inappropriately leaked to the web site.

When asked what the penalty is for a board member who has leaked sensitive information to public, Jones said there are a number of options. Those options include: censure, legal proceedings and/or a recall. He said the matter is currently under investigation.

A Watch Dog Survey
As a self-appointed watch dog of the www.ontheborderline.net web site, I thought it would be interesting to do a survey of how the current New Richmond school board members are viewed by the OTBL bloggers. The survey was simple and consisted of doing a search of the OTBL site with their site-provided search engine. I did the search on the seven members of the New Richmond board: William Brennan, Jr., Deanna Cook-Shannon, Greg Demulling, Greg Gartner, Lester Jones (president), Judith Remington (vp) and Chris Skoglund.

I got hits on all board members in my search. I classified the hits into three categories: positive, neutral and negative. The positive hits said good and favorable things about the board member. Neutral hits all fell into the category of straight reporting of elections result tallies. Negative hits were those where the board member was clearly characterized in an unfavorable and/or unflattering way.

I found a total 15 mentions of current board members in posts and comments: 6 positive, 4 neutral, 5 negative. Three members were only mentioned once and these were neutral. Jones (3 times) and Cook-Shannon (2 times) made up the five negative mentions. Brennan (5 times) and Remington (1 time) made up the six positive mentions.

And The Winner Is...
Getting 33% of the 15 mentions of NR board members, Bill Brennan was by far the leader of the pack. When it comes to focusing only on positive comments or posts, with his 88% of take, Brennan nearly brought home all the bacon. Clearly, Brennan is the OTBL'ers darling when it comes to the New Richmond school board. If fact, on January 22, 2005, an OBTL'er named him that day's "Ray of Hope."

Below are the posts I collect in my survey. I left out the neutral posts and included only the positive and negative posts. Feel free to review them.

William Brennan, Jr.. All of these were classified as positive.
10/30: New Richmond Still In Turmoil
10/12: New Richmond Referendum Effort
10/4: What's Our Capacity
7/25 School Board Having Problems? Get a Shrink.
1/22: Today's Ray of Hope

Deanna Cook-Shannon. Both were negative.
9/25: 10 People Screwing Up Wisconsin
7/25: School Board Got A Problem? Get a Shrink

Lester Jones. All three were in the negative category.
10/30: New Richmond Still In Turmoil
10/26: Looky, looky, looky What I Found
7/27: Son of School Board Problems

Judith RemingtonOne favorablele; the other neutral.
10/21: Ah, ah, ah, Not So Fast

There was one neutral post on Greg Demulling, Greg Gartner and Chris Skoglund. All concerned election results.

Not included in the survey were these posts mentioning Superintendent Dr. Craig H. Hitchens. Both were negative.
7/25: School Board Got A Problem? Get a Shrink
1/3: The TABOR Attack

Who Is The Leaker?
You can make your own speculations about were the leaks are coming from in the New Richmond school district. I want you to be aware of the situation. These types of leaks can be damaging to school board and administration credibility and can have expensive legal ramifications that get paid for by the tax payers. Of course, damaging the credibility of the school board members and the administration is a huge, bold, underlined and in capital letters bullet point on the OTBL'ers agenda.

If you pay attention to the OTBL web site, you will quickly notice nothing gets published that reflects positively on public schools or public education. The site administrator controls what gets published in the posts and the comments to the posts. When I participated on the OTBL web site, nothing I submitted to be posted was ever posted. All of it was information favorable to public schools and public education. Likewise, if you pay attention to want happens to a post commenter who dares disagree with the anti-public education discussion of the day, you will quickly see they are attacked and labeled "socialist," etc.

Here is a good example of the "intellectual" piling on that takes place when a newcomers dares defend public education. It's titled Motivations and Referendums. That my challenge and join the OTBL web site. Participate in it and add your comments of agreement and disagreement. See how long it takes the "intellectuals" to pull the noose around the concept of "debate." Once you take a few shots in the comments gallery, e-mail or try posting something the puts public education is a positive light.

Ponder this...In 1635 the Boston Latin School was established. This boys grammar school was supported by the town of Boston and is considered the beginning of public-funded education in the United States. In 1848, Karl Marx published the Communist Manifesto as an outcry of tthe exploitation of the working class. We all should know that Marx called upon "the workers of the world to unite and revolt against their oppressors, to abolish private property and free enterprise, and to form a kind of workers' community in which everyone would have an equal share." There was nearly a 200-year of public education tradition in the United States, before Marx published his Manifesto. You will notice the OTBL'ers don't let the facts of history get in their way, when it comes to attacking, labelinging and slandering those that don't agree with them. You will also notice that, in additional to ignoring history in the framing of their regressive attacks, they are also the advocating the elimination of the minimum wage. I guess the ultimate free market they advocate is were the vast majority of society works for free and call their bosses "Master."

From my observation of the workings of the New Richmond school board, the seven members consist mainly of citizens dedicated to working for a better future in a rapidly changing world. It's easy for the participants of the OTBL website to attack those not embracing their anti-community, anti-public educationion agenda. It must be a pretty miserable hobby to sit behind those "hood" names and bully the hardworking, dedicate members of the local community...

Don't get me wrong, I am a firm believer in minimizing the use of executive sessions in public meetings and I believe that the freer the information and the easier it is to access information, the better. At the same time, I understand there is a need to hold back information concerning personnel issues and delay the release of a variety of school district business-related information that includes union contract negotiations, land acquisitions and competitive bidding.

After the regular session of the October 26 board meeting, on my way out of the building, I thought I saw frequent OTBL poster BobZ off in a corner talking with board member Bill Brennan. You don't suppose BobZ was leaking the news to Bill that he was up for another OTBL "Ray of Hope" award?

James P. Nelson