From the BCCT
Coercion in Morrisville: Another unilateral decision
The Morrisville School District is conducting a re-registration for its existing students in an effort to identify and remove nonresidents from our schools and lessen the tax burden. While I appreciate the idea, I am concerned with how this is being handled by the school board.
The largest concern I have with the re-registration, besides the hassle itself, is regarding the use of volunteers for the re-registration process and their handling of confidential personal information. According to the 2006 Identity Theft Survey Report published in November 2007 by the Federal Trade Commission, 8.3 million people had fallen victim of identity theft. While we would all like to trust our neighbors — and I do sincerely thank them for volunteering their time — we also must not be naive to the risks of giving out personal information.
When my wife contacted school Superintendent Elizabeth Yonson with our concerns, she was told that this was a decision made by the school board and that her recommendation was to come in during daytime hours when district employees would be available to handle the re-registration process. If this were a board decision then I would expect that a motion would have been made and voted on; to my knowledge no such vote occurred.
Instead we are being coerced to comply with the re-registration, at the whim of select board members, because, according to the article in the Courier Times and the public notice on the district’s Web site, “class schedules and assignments will not be sent until your student is re-registered.”
This appears to be the latest in a string of unilateral decisions by board President Bill Hellmann, and it needs to stop. Re-registration should only be handled by district employees and the school board must begin to follow due process.
Peter Eisengrein Morrisville
Sunday, August 10, 2008
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1 comment:
Ahhh! Peter. Thank you for "sincerely" thanking your neighbors for volunteering. To bad then that you don't trust them to do the job. Why do you believe that your "neighbors" are more likely to swipe identities than district employees. Better yet, why are you suspicious of "your neighbors at all? Didn't your neighbors trust you as their school board Representatives when you defied their will over the new school issue? Why should the people trust the district more than themselves in light of the nefarious history within the school district? When you refer to trust issues within our school district, you should start by looking in the mirror Peter!!!
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