Giving more privacy to people

Before the blog gets buried again by more posts related to the resignation of Wake County Schools Supt. Del Burns' resignation, here's something that should make privacy advocates feel a little better.

During Tuesday's committee of the whole meeting, the school board agreed to tell staff to remove the addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses from the more than 800 people who had left comments on the district's web site about school calendars.

The board also agreed to partially honor the request of the ACLU of North Carolina by no longer requiring speakers at board meetings to say their address.

Moving back to the online comments, administrators had defended leaving the personal info online by saying no promise of anonymity was made to those people. They had said people filling out the survey were warned that their comments would be part of the public record.

On Tuesday, administrators stressed that the comment feature in question was meant to be taken by non-parents who could not take the calendar survey. Supt. Del Burns pointed out that comments by parents on the actual calendar survey have remained anonymous.

But some parents and teachers joined other members of the public in filling out the non-parent comment option. Many of these people complained to school board members, prompting them to direct staff to make changes to what's been posted online.

Board members opted to leave in the names of the people making comments.

As of this morning, the e-mail addresses, addresses and phone numbers have been removed. That still might not be enough for some people.

As for the ACLU request, the group had argued that requiring people to state their names and addresses in order to be permitted to speak at school board meetings "is a form of censorship of the speaker's message based on content, in violation of the First Amendment."

The board members weren't willing to go that far. Instead, they said people only have to say their name out loud when they're at the podium.

Several speakers on Tuesday were told by school board chairman Ron Margiotta that they no longer had to say their address out loud.

You still have to list your name, address and phone number on the sign-up sheet, which is public information.