NB: Per an email, Town Manager Bonnie Therrien announced that the BOE email addresses were now activate, 7/1/2003. The article below is maintained unchanged for the essentially unchanged information and perspective it provided. Dr.Ken
NEWS BULLETIN
BOE MEMBERS TO HAVE OFFICIAL
EMAIL ADDRESSES SOON.
Wethersfield, CT
June 26, 2003
Dr.Ken Sokolowski
As you read this, Tom Hemphill, Information Specialist, for the Town of Wethersfield is hard at work completing the connections which will give each Wethersfield Board of Education member his or her own official email address. According to Dr. Patrick Proctor, Superintendent of the Wethersfield Public Schools, those email addresses will be active within the next two weeks.
During the reign of the former Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Lynne Pierson, there was no official public email access to the members of the Board of Educations by way of the WPS's website. A printed copy all of the email addresses of the administrative staff of the WPS was provided by Pierson following a FOI request by wethersfield.net. Several months after her departure, www.wethersfield.net renewed its request for a digital copy of the then current email addresses of the administrative staff. That request was honored and since then www.wethersfield.net had those addresses posted on its "Town of Wethersfield" page. However, no email link was provided the public for contact with the members of the BOE.
Due to pressure from citizens and the media, BOE Chair Penny Stanziale was eventually given the only (and some would say well hidden) email address on the that WPS site: pstanziale@wethersfield.k12.ct.us Accompanied by a disclaimer of confidentiality, it is still active as of this writing.
With Hemphill's work, that is about to change. John and Jane Q. Cyber-Public will now be able to email each and every member of the Board of Education (in addition to administrative staff of the WPS). Previously, the personal email addresses of the BOE members were harder to come by than those of the Town Council, which has just recently gotten its own official email addresses.
Behind the prolonged delay were unresolved issues concerning personal privacy, the public's "right to know," the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and technical matters such as the archiving of official email correspondence between the BOE members and the public. Though these issues have not been completely resolved, the BOE has finally chosen to step into the 21th century and open communications directly with the public. Guidelines, rules and agreements are being drawn up for the BOE members to condition their use of this email service, no doubt similar to those for the Town Council members.
All of these correspondences (BOE, WPS and Council) will pass through one or more Town computers (servers) which will archive everything, creating the cyber-equivalent of a paper trail. Who said what to whom about whatever will now be dated and retained. All of this official email traffic may now be available under the FOI, except in those matters already exempted (e.g. personnel matters, pending litigation, contract negotiations, etc.).
The BOE will join the Council in using email boxes associated with another domain owned by the Town: www.wethersfield.org (apparently a mirror site for www.wethersfieldct.com). The new email addresses will usually be the initial of the first name and the entire last name followed by @wethersfield.org (with no intervening characters):
They should all go active at the same time. Just when is not yet known. The BOE or Town may release a bulletin announcing their effective date. For the impatient few, try one every few days, until they work. Remember, whatever you send by email become part of an official archive.
The public can look forward to the increased potential access to the BoE members; this is something very new. How each member to uses his or her account will be ultimately left to that member. Writing an email to anyone guarantees nothing. However, the wise BOE member (and members of Council) will treat this as an opportunity to improve their services to the public. The public hopefully will use this as an opportunity to provide the Council and BOE members with pertinent questions and with offers of additional insight and support.
~ W.N ~
