Everett, WA superintendent admits to secretly videotaping classroom

[funflower]

What is your take on this? Is this legal?

EVERETT -- The Everett teachers union says it will file a complaint against the Everett School District over the district's videotape surveillance of a high school teacher's classroom for about a month last year.

The union says the district violated labor practices and employees' rights and is calling for an open hearing about how the recordings, which are now missing, were used, The Herald (Everett) reported Wednesday.

District Superintendent Carol Whitehead revealed Friday in a two-page letter to district employees that the district used a video camera to tape English and journalism teacher Kay Powers' classroom from May 10 to June 11, 2007.

Last month, a district lawyer had denied a surveillance camera was used.

The surveillance was done to determine who was entering and leaving the classroom on weekends, Whitehead said, adding that it is the 18,500- student district's "paramount duty to protect students."

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/364980_teachertape29.html

Edited to include a little more info: This teacher was apparently involved in helping kids produce an underground student newspaper after the regular school paper closed due to a fight with the the district brass (same people who placed the camera), who wanted to pre-approve the content of the paper and the students said no. The teacher was fired but rehired after she demanded a hearing and other teachers started commenting that they'd seen this suspicious device (which hid the camera) in her classroom.

[liberaldem4ever]

1. I can't remember the details about this

I live in Everett and I've heard about this before. What was the whole underground newspaper thing about and why did people get so upset about it? Didn't a boy get expelled for it and it caused all kinds of problems for him? Seems like it happened a while ago and I can't remember too much about what happened.

[teacher gal]

3. It would be interesting

to know what those videos actually showed. It seems to me if there was anything inappropriate, the teacher would not have been re-instated?

"If all this is true, why did she hire (Powers) back?" Cogdill asked. "Isn't she being negligent in doing so if it's true?"

On the other hand, some things do sound rather inappropriate...but we don't know all the facts.

Why would the videotape disappear? Perhaps the district and superintendent, on further reflection, realized THEY could be in hot water and disposed of it?

Who knows...quite interesting.

[funflower]

5. And, if they disposed of evidence of wrongdoing or a crime, isn't that

wrongdoing or illegal itself?

[Zywiec]

2. It's a public high school, right?

I have no problem with this. Why would a teacher expect privacy in her classroom from the school administrators?

:shrug:

[funflower]

4. When I was a teacher, I used to change my clothes in my classroom and go running after school.

Now I do the same thing in my office. I realize a boss may knock on my door at any moment, but that seems different than having them install a secret camera. I don't know, but it seems to me there should be some threshold that must be reached before they can just start spying on people. There's no allegation that students were in any danger - just that the teacher was letting them use her classroom computers to work on their off-campus newspaper. And the teacher was reinstated.

[LWolf]

8. I did, too.

When I worked in an elementary school, and taught PE as part of the day, I sometimes changed in my room at lunch. There was one small, overcrowded staff restroom, and it wasn't anywhere near my classroom.

[Nevernose]

10. It's the fact that it was secret

What's the point in making it secret? To catch the teacher and/or students doing something wrong.

What's the worst thing that could have happened by putting in a very visible camera in all four corners of the room? The teachers and students would be on task more often?

Go into a store sometime and look for those little black camera bubbles on the ceiling. They're not trying to hide them. The point isn't to catch shoplifters, it's to prevent shoplifting. In fact, most of the little black bubbles don't even have cameras in them.

There's also a big difference between allowing anyone to come in at any time and observe as long as they want to and being secretly videotaped.

[MichiganVote]

6. In the case of schools its a labor no-no.

[funflower]

7. In what way? Is it a contract violation or something else? n/t

[MichiganVote]

9. (1. Because teachers have regular observations done by administrators

and yes that could represent a contract violation

and

(2. It could constitute a violation of students' civil rights

and

(3. Taping or video taping anyone w/o their awareness is also illegal in some circumstances