This morning, teachers at West High School in Manchester found an email from Ms. Douglass saying:
‘My name is Megan. I am a former middle school teacher, and I am a member of Organizing for Action/Manchester. I am writing to invite you to a rally that OFA is sponsoring, to call attention to education cuts caused by the sequester. The rally will be held on March 22, 2013, at 3:30pm, on North Main Street across from West High School.
I taught in Philadelphia and Charlotte schools. I found the job to be extremely challenging. There never seemed to be enough of me to provide for my students. My students and I worked in large classes, struggled with a lack of texts and supplies, and were often frustrated by a lack of parental and community support.
I hope the rally will remind people how valuable teachers are, how hard they work, and how important strong public schools are to our children and to our community. I hope you can join us.
The link to the event is:
https://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gskg2j.
If you’d like to come, please RSVP there.
Respectfully,
Megan Douglass, Esq.’
Turns out Ms. Douglass is also an associate attorney with the Backus Meyer & Branch law firm in Manchester. The company website says: “Megan devotes much of her practice to Employment and Civil Rights matters. She endeavors to provide’ (Note: The apostrophe is an existing typo on the page) a firm and thoughtful approach in representing her clients.”
But back to the unsolicited email. Interestingly, when one opens the “link” to the event in Ms. Douglass’ email, one finds that Ms. Douglass is not actually the host; instead, a Ms. Jessica Lubien named as the host.
A simple Google search reveals that a Ms. Jessica Lubien is listed as a “nursery school” teacher at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Manchester. Is it the same Ms. Lubien? We don’t know.
Now, Article 18, Paragraph C of the “Agreement Between the Manchester Board of School Committee and the Manchester Education Association (2009-2013)” clearly states: “The Association will have the right to place notices, circulars and other material in teacher’s mailboxes, provided that such materials shall not relate to local, state or national political matters. Copies of all such material will be given to the Principal, but the Principal’s advance approval will not be required.”
So we know it wasn’t the union sending out this unsolicited email. But we wondered how in the world did Ms. Douglass get the West High School teachers’ emails? As it turns out, they are all posted in the West High School website so anyone can see them and presumably, copy them for any old use one has in mind.
Now, if were a teacher, I’d expect that my contact details would certainly be made available to my fellow teachers, administrative staff, maybe my students and certainly my students’ parents. But surely being a teacher doesn’t mean that my contact details are available to any old snake oil salesman who happens upon the website.
I’m wondering whether the teachers a West High School are going to ask that some sort of firewall be erected to keep them from becoming targets of unsolicited email of any kind? I sure would.