School board considers changing email policy

WINSTED — The Winchester Board of Education’s School Policy and Bylaws Committee met and discussed possible changes to the board’s email policy on Thursday, Sept. 29, at Batcheller School.While no decisions were made at the meeting, the committee explored options for changing the way members communicate through email about school business.At the meeting, Board of Education Chairman Susan Hoffnagle said the proposed changes came in light of a Freedom of Information (FOI) request filed on Aug. 9 by The Winsted Journal to view emails by board members relating to board business.“When we got the [FOI] request, we found that we had to go into our [board members’] personal emails to sort them out, which was extraordinary work,” Hoffnagle said. “So what we want to do is have a process in place to capture these emails in a permanent record.”District Technology Coordinator Joe Cifaldi was at the committee meeting and listened to Hoffnagle’s ideas.She proposed to Cifaldi that the school district set up two email addresses to capture emails.Hoffnagle proposed that one email address would be labeled “FOI Mailbox” and the other would be labeled “Board Records Privileged.”Hoffnagle said that board members would then forward any and all emails pertaining to school board business to either of the two email addresses, the FOI Mailbox for general board business and Board Records Privileged for email correspondence determined to be privileged information.“If someone makes a [FOI] request, then [Superintendent’s Secretary Jan Roy] can go into that mailbox and print them out,” Hoffnagle said.Cifaldi said he would look into the possibility of creating the two email addresses for the district’s email server.After the discussion with Cifaldi, committee Chairman Richard Dutton discussed the possibility of changing the guidelines for email usage in the committee bylaws.First, Dutton talked about guidelines concerning email retention.“There are some emails that are like a telephone conversation; they do not need to be retained,” Dutton said. “There are some emails with more importance where we need permission before we destroy it. What I would like to deal with is a gray area of what constitutes a proper [school business] email.”Dutton then reviewed several potential suggestions for changes in the email policy as recommended by the state’s Association of Board of Education Public Policy.One suggestion from the association is to add a disclaimer to certain emails indicating that they are not being sent for deliberative purposes.However, in the board’s current bylaw regarding email usage and retention, it is listed that “Board members shall not use email as a substitute for deliberation at public meetings, and/or shall not use email to vote informally on any issues.”Dutton then reviewed another suggestion from the association regarding what could be considered a board quorum in email communications, which he said is not defined in the board’s current bylaws.“The majority of the board, which would be five in our case, shall not outside of an authorized meeting use a series of electronic communication of any kind to directly approve, deliberate, discuss or take action which is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the board,” Dutton said.He pointed to this reporter when he made his next comment. “Whatever we decide here, it is up to Mister Public sitting over here to decide if this is a violation,” he said. “Then he makes a complaint to the [FOI] commission, then they investigate to see if it can be sorted out. It’s a long, drawn-out process, and I have gone to Hartford twice, maybe three times with previous board members and their lawyers to meet with the [FOI] commission. In all of the cases I have seen so far they have ruled in favor of what the board did.”Dutton did not specify any details of the previous FOI cases during the meeting.The Board of Education is expected to be taking up this issue during its next regular meeting, which is scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 11, at 7 p.m. at Town Hall.