Well, the HEA leadership is not happy. They are apparently mad because I dared respond to their threatening letter in public. They are mad because at least one of their members isn't keeping their secrets. They claim that they are just trying to protect their membership.
If they want to protect their membership, they should think about giving up the intimidation tactics. Every time they stir the pot, the focus is put back on the member they are claiming to protect. Without their threatening letter, this story would have died with the small number of people who happened to see it. By working so hard to stomp on free speech rights, they are drawing negative attention to themselves and the teacher involved.
The HEA leadership is saying that I am trying to intimidate them. That is funny. The HEA/MEA is a well oiled political machine. They are highly trained, well funded and skilled in the art of dodging transparency.
Parents, taxpayers and community members want and deserve transparency. We all are entitled to free speech. If groups like the MEA are able to succeed at intimidating folks into silence, we all lose. The MEA/HEA continues to fight against free speech and the freedom of information act.
They have included a new argument in their latest press release. They have claimed that my posting the e-mail violated copywrite laws. The e-mail was forwarded to me by one of their members. For more information on copywrite issues go to:
http://www.piercelaw.edu/thomasfield/ipbasics/copyright-on-the-internet.php
Here is what was reported in the Free Press:
In Howell, a teacher's e-mail center of dispute
BY SHARON GITTLEMAN • FREE PRESS SPECIAL WRITER • December 21, 2008
When does a seemingly private communication become a subject for public discussion? That's one question at the heart of an ongoing dispute between Howell teachers and a school board member.
In October, Howell school board Trustee Wendy Day reprinted a teacher's e-mail to members of a listserv, an online bulletin board, run by the Howell Education Association.
The post offered the teacher's thoughts on the possibility of a teacher strike next year in light of the coming school board elections. Teachers and the board member have been at odds ever since over the propriety of publicizing the comment and freedom of speech.
"We created this forum because e-mail at school isn't an appropriate place for discussions or commentary," said Karen Langer, a teacher at Howell High School and president of the Howell Education Association. "We'd like our members to be able to express their opinions."
The 100-member listserv is open to members of the HEA; it's unclear how Day gained access.
"It could be viewed as interference in union business," Langer said. "We felt it was extremely inappropriate. Posting those comments weren't productive, except to make that member feel embarrassed or humiliated."
Langer said a teachers union lawyer sent a cease and desist letter to Day, who responded by demanding, through her blog, an apology from union officials, who say they see no need for one.
Day could not be reached for comment. According to her blog, she also complained to the American Civil Liberties Union and the Michigan Civil Rights Commission.
The principle of freedom of speech trumps privacy rights, said Wayne State University constitutional law professor Robert Sedler.
"She has the First Amendment right to comment to other people," Sedler said. "If the lawyer would try to get a court order to stop her from circulating this, the court would refuse to intervene."
Writings published on a private listserv aren't protected from disclosure, Sedler said.
"The listserv is public enough. It was circulated," he said. "The First Amendment encourages a robust exchange of ideas."
Howell Board of Education President Ed Literski said the school board has no authority to order Day to stop publishing material on her blog.
Here is the press release the HEA sent out last week:
From: The Howell Education Association
Date: December 18, 2008
Re: Howell Education Association Response to School Board Member’s Comments
The Howell Education Association is comprised of over 450 members teaching grades K-12 in 11 buildings. With a membership of this magnitude, communication is a great challenge. In 2007, the Howell Education Association began a password-protected list-serve to provide a means of communication to members, as well as provide a forum for members to express diverse opinions covering a wide range of educational subjects.
The officers of the Howell Education Association are charged with many responsibilities. Our primary responsibility is to serve as representatives for our members in all matters. When Howell Public Schools School Board member, Wendy Day, published on her blog a copyright protected communiqué posted by a teacher in our password-protected forum, our member felt publicly humiliated and attacked. The choice to publish the comments without prior permission from or notification to the teacher is a deliberate attempt to convey misleading information that the Howell Education Association was considering job action at a time when we have a settled contract and are not engaged in bargaining talks. It is an attempt to undermine the efforts that have been made to move our District forward in a positive manner.
It is our duty as Union officers to defend all teachers with the resources we have available. To clarify this further, we have added additional copyright language to all of our postings on our list-serve to help protect us from a repeat incident. Our decision to seek legal counsel and issue a cease and desist letter to Ms. Day in order to protect our members from further personal attacks was done in a civil and respectful manner.
It is our view that the Howell community has high expectations of their duly elected officials. School board members represent the community as well as the employees that work for the schools. Though Ms. Day makes the claim that her blog was personal rather than an expression of her public office, we disagree. We further question the wisdom in her decision to pontificate, from her public board seat during a public meeting, in response to our legal request to cease and desist in her behavior. We feel that these actions have brought negative attention to Howell Public Schools and the Howell community. We find her response to our request to cease and desist completely inappropriate and feel that speaking from her board seat invalidates her claim that her original action was private rather than public. It is our view that her actions and demands are an attempt to interfere with Association business, and thereby are a violation of the Public Employment Relations Act.
We cannot and will not cease in our responsibility to represent and protect our membership.
8 comments:
You just don’t get it do you? You’re management. How can you possibly negotiate in good faith after this stunt? There should also be no reason for you to vote for the board to go into closed executive session to disuses a union contract after this.
If you don’t want to be management, fine. Do this community a favor and resign, and you can continue your anti-teacher, anti-public school and anti-union crusade all you want as a private citizen.
You just don't get it CG - the First Amendment is the First Amendment.
Nice to see Langer trap herself with the comment that e-mail in school is inappropriate. Can you say - BIG CONTRADICTION with the FOIA lawsuit?
And the union started this "stunt" with a public letter to the Board.
And while I doubt it will happen - I wouldn't mind seeing every board discuss contracts in open session. Indeed, let's have the bargaining done in the open.
Why am I not surprised you are defending Ms. Day. This is the person you claimed you had no contact with when you started your fishing expedition to smear the teacher's union. This answers my question as to who "we" is.
This is not about the 1st Amendment, it's about Day engaging in unfair labor practices. Ms. Langer is correct when she says, "school isn't an appropriate place for discussions or commentary," and this was their way to correct that. But at no time did she say it was illegal, and the union has a recognized right to use the school computers.
The board will never discuss contracts in open session. But I do know this; there is no way Ms. Day can ever vote to go into closed session to discuss a union contract.
Kevin, that was a political communication and not a contractual communication. There's concentrating on one line. You're confusing the two. If it was contractual, then Wendy would have been in bigtime trouble. If it was a true contractual related communication we all would have known about it since the MEA lawyers would have claimed unfair labor practice (and likely win).
As far as "voting for the contract or not" in executive session, that's speculation. I don't know how anyone would vote as it depends on the agreement reached.
""Our decision to seek legal counsel and issue a cease and desist letter to Ms. Day in order to protect our members from further personal attacks was done in a civil and respectful manner. """
What??? It may be civil to the counsel of both sides, but there's noting civil about being threatened to be placed in the defendant's chair. It's sabre rattling.
Hey, CG, that's another fact you got wrong blatantly again (in your obsessive recent attacks). I contacted Day on (or within a day or so of) May 3rd but did NOT START my FOIA in May or contact Day "before the FOIA" as you asserted falsely on your blog recently. The FOIA was filed 5 weeks before that - on March 28. I asked her - on a blog - how to reach her because the FOIA was being released and she was clearly part of the story, and I was writing a story about the FOIA request. As a writer, you'd certainly expect me to contact various parties related to the story. You'd also certainly expect me to follow a recent case where union officials now admit that using school e-mail is inappropriate (sorry, quote from Karen Langer, HEA president), so commenting here is quite reasonable.
There is no "conspiracy" or "vast right wing conspiracy" here.
"We" referred to my legal team, and is a habit of writing anyway - which happens to consist of more than one attorney just as the MEA's legal team consists of more than one attorney. "We weren't surprised by appeal" means that my lawyers and I weren't surprised. Though I doubt many other people were surprised either.
You also claimed you had no contact with Day or "LOVE." We know that not to be true, and we will probably never know how closely you are linked. What we do know is you have the same mission. As for the HEA president's quote, I don't see the inconstancy. No one ever said it was not appropriate, but you are trying to make the case it is illegal. As it has been proven, it's not.
You keep telling me on the one hand it is not a conspiracy, but in the next sentence you talk about your legal team. I was always under the impression that lawyers cost money. I wonder who is paying them and you?
Actually, again, CG, you get that wrong with the meta-lie that I didn't tell the truth on that.
I said I hadn't contacted Day BEFORE the FOIA or that she had anything to do with the FOIA. I was telling the truth. Your spin in May 2007 as soon as I contacted Day (which I did in a highly transparent way - via her comments section publicly) was that I contacted her before the FOIA. But since the FOIA was dated March 28 and March 30, and I contacted Day on May 3-4th (forget exactly), which was as I was reading material that just was released under FOIA, the contact makes journalistic sense and it could not be "in contact" with Day "before" the FOIA or as part of some planned conspiratorial action as your initial argument required to make sense. If I were in some planned action with her - putting a request to contact me on her website would have been illogical for the obvious reasons.
Aside from that - I do not have the same "mission" as Day. I'm an individual seeking my own truth - or more properly, seeking the truth on my own. Perhaps in the grand scheme of the universe I suppose we all have that mission - but I don't blindly travel down anyone else's path even if coincidentally parts of those paths overlap. The fact that coincidentally paths overlap coincidentally doesn't make any one wrong - for example, I'm sure we both consider Osama bin Laden a criminal and you and I (most Americans) are on the same path in agreement to the destruction of his dangerous system of belief. As Americans, we both agree on a number of things, actually.
Finally, and I'm surprised you didn't know this - it is a matter of public record. National Right to Work Foundation is representing me along with local in-state counsel, which dramatically reduced my personal costs after the first month. Since I was facing the infinite litigation budget of the MEA it was only natural and logical that I arm myself with sufficiently powerful lawyers on the other side. There's nothing wrong with that - I think the MEA thought they'd blow me away in a gunfight that I'd come to only lightly armed.
That I have allies is not in dispute - "conspiracy" implies that the chain of events was planned as part of some larger strategy from the beginning. Not so.
If this whole thing isn't more proof that unions are antithetical to both education AND good government, what is? And now unions are against freedom of speech and an open dialog and debate of issues.
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