Pratfalls of Electronic Communication

Legal Brief

Imagine the following situation: The school board president just sent a controversial e-mail regarding teacher staffing reductions intended for a few but mistakenly sent districtwide.

Or consider this: When answering an angry parent’s e-mail, the superintendent inadvertently hits “reply to all,” sharing profane and derogatory comments about the parent.

It would be wonderful to claim these examples as fake news or mock scenarios. With a facepalm and deep sigh of frustration, I must report these are the types of cases that come into our office regularly. They are indeed real.

Senseless Behavior

To provide comic relief on a subject that provides none, I am offering an abridged version of David Letterman’s Top 10: “A Superintendent’s Shortlist to Stop the Senselessness.”

You are in the business of education. That includes educating your board, administration and staff.

Electronic communication is effective and efficient but only when used by educated and thoughtful individuals. Superintendents need to impress on the board, administrators and staff the practical, legal and political pitfalls of communicating electronically.

All states have sunshine laws that make most electronic communications regarding school business subject to public disclosure and consumption pursuant to freedom of information laws. As such, it is a good idea to insist all school officials, including board members, use district-provided e-mail and text-messaging accounts. It is even more crucial that someone teach them how to use the account. Not everyone is a digital native. Most board members and administrators actually are digital immigrants with little knowledge on use or dangers of the account.

Moreover, school officials and staff sometimes believe if they send a message from a personal device or account that it is a sneaky way around the public disclosure laws. Learn from the experience of some Illinois public officials: If the communication is connected at all to school business, it will find a way to surface, usually at the most inopportune time and in the most embarrassing manner.

If you don’t want your mother to read It, don’t write It!

Now that text messages, snaps, tweets and e-mails are shared without much forethought or analysis, you have to use the old fashioned “gut check” to stay out of trouble. If something is not intended for the public, putting it in writing is never a good idea. No one looks today for the feel-good story — they want something juicy and ripe for public discourse.

Quick angry text messages, politically motivated tweets and profanity-ridden e-mail messages feed this phenomenon. Stop providing the fodder. In Illinois, we educate all new superintendents as part of their indoctrination that if you do not want your mother to read it, don’t write it, don’t speak it and certainly do not put it in an electronic communication.

Electronic communications are like cockroaches — indestructible even by nuclear warfare.

News Alert: Deleted electronic messages never disappear. Although some would believe this to be common sense, through countless representation of school districts and administrators over the past 15 years, I can attest that no one believes it will happen to them.

It is becoming common for public schools to receive requests for all electronic communication, including text messages, especially those connected to political and litigious situations. Although sunshine laws do have disclosure exemptions for personal and student privacy, legal bodies more often find in favor of redaction and release, especially during litigation.

Alert and Awake

Failing to educate and periodically remind yourself and others of the pitfalls regarding electronic communication is a recipe for disaster. Education, cognizant recognition and steadfast discipline are the only ways to avoid the fate of many when it comes to electronic communication gone wrong.


SARA BOUCEK is general counsel for the Illinois Association of School of Administrators in Springfield, Ill.
Twitter: @sboucek