And with his non-answer answer, our RSA 91:A demands are acting like rabbits. And now, other people are starting to report in on “strange” behavior while using the Nashua School District (“NSD”) network. In effect, Dr. Mosley and the Nashua Board of Education have decided to invoke the Streisand Effect upon themselves. So folks, go ahead and do some more reach out to other various sites – let’s see who can come up with the most blocked sites!
However, time to get back on point – here was my response late last night to Dr. Mosley’s Letter (reproduced after mine) with additional emphasis (and some gentle editing / mistyping corrections):
From: “Skip” <Skip@GraniteGrok.com>
To: “Jahmal Mosley” <mosleyj@nashua.edu>; “boe@nashua.edu” <boe@nashua.edu>
Sent: 5/26/2019 10:44:55 PM
Subject: Re[2]: RSA 91:A demand for the Nashua School Board, the Nashua School District, and Superintendent Mosely
Dr. Mosley,
It is obvious that I am in receipt of your email in which I will give you kudos for responding on a Sunday morning of a long holiday weekend. However, it essentially takes the road of not providing any responsive records to our base questions:
- I am looking for copies of all correspondence ( hardcopy and/or electronic) between any and all Nashua School Board members, the Superintend of the District, staff in the Superintendent’s office, staff within the Nashua School District Administration, or the teacher’s union(s) that are directly or indirectly related to the process of deciding that GraniteGrok should be banned from being accessed from within the Nashua School District IT / network infrastructure normally available to staff and students.
- I am looking for copies of all correspondence ( hardcopy and/or electronic) between any and all Nashua School Board members, the Superintend of the District, staff in the Superintendent’s office, staff within the Nashua School District Administration, or the teacher’s union(s) that are directly or indirectly related to the process of implementing the policy that GraniteGrok will be banned from being accessed from within the Nashua School District IT / network infrastructure normally available to staff and students.
Those can be boiled down to these three questions that are easier to understand:
- Why was GraniteGrok.com banned from the NSD network (e.g., NSD staff and students cannot access GraniteGrok)?
- How was that decision made – who (or what formal or informal “committee”) made it?
- Who implemented that decision?
So given the non-responsive answers to our first NH RSA 91:A demand, please consider the above three questions to be our second (of what may be a series given that your email is effectively an avoidance of that first request) NH RSA 91:A. As this is being copied to the Nashua Board of Education, this second demand is also directed at them.
From your email, I have made the following observations.
- All protestations aside, your own webfilter software has been set to blacklist GraniteGrok.com; see the attached image and review the address shown (e.g., webfilter.nashua.edu). Thus, an explicit decision was made to blacklist us.
- Your policy EHAA doesn’t have a provision to stop NSD staff or students from accessing ANY website. In fact, it doesn’t come close to addressing this issue as I note here (https://granitegrok.com/blog/2019/05/nashua-school-district-superintendent-jahmal-mosley-responds-to-our-rsa-91a-demand-poorly).
- Most of your answer contained in your email is non-responsive (e.g., how policy is crafted and your narrative of your actions that make up the end of your email) and therefore is irrelevant to our NH RSA 91:A demand
[Since Dr. Mosley didn’t bother to reference his own network policy] I have reviewed your network policy EHAA:
- In general, employees of the District are expected to communicate in a professional manner consistent with City, State, and federal laws governing the behavior of school
employees and with federal copyright laws. - NRT systems are owned by the District. All messages, data, or conversations (information) composed, stored, sent, or received using these systems, including erased
files that are recoverable, are and remain the property of the District. - The District reserves, and may exercise without prior notice, the right to read, review, audit, intercept, access, or disclose any and all information composed, stored, sent, or received by employees over NRT systems for any purpose, even if coded or passworded. Notwithstanding the District’s right to retrieve and monitor information as outlined herein, such information should be treated as personal by other employees and accessed only by the intended recipient. Any exception to this policy must receive prior approval by the Superintendent.
- NRT systems may not be used to solicit or proselytize for commercial ventures, religious or political causes, outside organizations, or other non-job-related solicitations.
- The District prohibits the sending of discriminatory, harassing, or offensive materials in any form of media. Among those which are considered offensive are any messages or
pictures which contain sexual implications, racial slurs, gender-specific comments, or any other comments that offensively address someone’s age, sexual orientation, religious or
political beliefs, national origin, or disability. - Generally, NRT systems are to be used for business purposes only, with the following exception: Personal use of NRT systems during working hours is permitted on a very
limited basis as long as it does not interfere with the employee’s job performance or the operation of the District, does not otherwise violate this policy or any other District
policies, and does not result in additional costs to the District. - The District has the authority to terminate or limit access to any program or NRT system at any time.
It is clear that you have no formal policy concerning this matter – you have no policy under which GraniteGrok (or any other site) can be blocked for simply reporting or opining on newsworthy items (specifically, the NSD).
[And then for the reason why I bolded much of #3 above] However, given that you do have a web filter system in place, we are now issuing a third NH RSA 91:A demand:
- Web filter software of all types have logs associated with them – either operationally, administratively, or both (along with others type of logs). Under RSA 91:A, we are demanding complete electronic copies of those log(s) from a date of January 1, 2019 to today.
- Such software also provides logs of IP/TCP data packet traffic, inbound and outbound, in order to process the rules that have been set for it – we are requesting. We are asking for the log(s) for this traffic for the same time period as #1. It is also available from your switches / routers.
- Your non-responsive answer in your email is non-responsive only because you addressed only your own actions. Yet you are the “directing manager” of an entire host of employees that report, directly or indirectly, to you. Their actions in this matter were conspicuously absent in your email answer to me.
Four quick scenarios point out this complete lapse in your answer:
- IT staff went rogue just “flipped the switch” for a blacklist entry (after all, they own all the “good passwords”.
- Someone else in the Superintendent’s Office took it upon themselves to issue such a command / desire even if you didn’t
- Some other member of the NSD Staff communicated to “flip the switch” to someone who would either pass on that message or directly had the capability and access to implement it.
- Or some member on the Board of Education directly contacted an NSD staff member to have us banned.
Do you want to revise your original answer, given this lapse?
Your email also begs a fourth RSA 91:A demand:
- Did you, as a result of our first NH RSA 91:A demand, start an investigation as to how the NSD blacklisting was achieved (again, I reference your own software’s notice of blocking GraniteGrok)?
- If yes, what was the outcome? If not, why not?
- When will the blacklisting of GraniteGrok.com be lifted?
Please note that all of these new RSA 91:A demands also apply to the Nashua Board of Education members and staff.
– Skip
GraniteGrok.com
**************************
—— Original Message ——
From: “Jahmal Mosley” <mosleyj@nashua.edu>
To: “BOE” <BOE@nashua.edu>; “Skip” <Skip@granitegrok.com>
Cc: “Donna Fitzpatrick” <fitzpatrickd@nashua.edu>; “Garth McKinney” <McKinneyG@nashua.edu>; “Adam Marcoux” <Nashuatu@nashuatu.org>
Sent: 5/26/2019 10:12:32 AM
Subject: Re: RSA 91:A demand for the Nashua School Board, the Nashua School District, and Superintendent Mosely
Good Morning Mr. Murphy,
Allow me to formally to introduce myself, my name is Dr. Jahmal Mosley and I am the superintendent of the Nashua Public Schools. I do not know where you, or members of your organization received your information regarding a false claim that the Nashua Public Schools recently implemented a policy that banned students and staff from accessing the blogger website, GraniteGrok.com. For clarification, all school policies are first broached and discussed at the policy sub–committee meetings. Then, new policies are approved by the policy sub-committee and are then forwarded to the Board of Education (BOE) for further discussion and potential vote—not all policies are approved when they come before the full board. Some policies are referred back to the policy sub-committee for further edits or modifications. Moreover, a board vote needs to be taken for consideration of the adoption of a new policy. The policy committee, nor the Nashua board of Education created an internal or external policy specifically banning the GraniteGrok blogger website.
In addition, I have never had a conversation with any employee in my office regarding a policy banning or blocking a blogger website from the school district’s server. Yesterday, I along with middle schoolers, laid over 300 flags on Nashua veterans’ graves who served in the military. We have 11,000+ students and our priorities are as follows as we draw to the end of the year:
· Coordinating Kindergarten enrollments district wide
· Planning graduations
· Writing strategic plan
· Planning the construction/renovation of three middle schools
· Acknowledging retiring teachers and years of service
· Hiring new district wide faculty
· Preparing for summer school
· Planning Admin. Retreat
· Welcoming new admin to the district
· Hiring new district wide administrators
· Hiring ELL teachers
· Visiting schools and acknowledging the work of faculty and students
This is a snapshot of a few activities we have been discussing at central office. I can assure you that a blog is not a topic of conversation in our office. Thus, there is no documentation of an initiative or a policy banning a GraniteGrok blogger website.
Tomorrow, I will be at a Memorial Day parade including students from every school in Nashua. I will be there tweeting out pictures. Having said that, I hope that you will join our schools and community tomorrow as we celebrate the sacrifices our veterans made to this country. If you would like to join me at the parade to acknowledge our students or veterans, please let me know and I will bring an extra chair for you to sit beside me. I would be happy to talk with you about the wonderful student activities in the district.
Best,
Dr. Jahmal Mosley
Superintendent of Schools
141 Ledge Street
Nashua, NH 03060
603-966-1003
