Two board members need official District email addresses

Richland 2 School District should create District-server email addresses for Trustee Monica Elkins and, if and when Teresa Holmes ever becomes a legal board member, for her.

The District did promptly establish an official email address for Mrs. McFadden, after she became a legal board member, by her being properly sworn in and taking office in accordance with State law.

The District has improperly allowed Ms. Elkins and Ms. Holmes to use personal email addresses for school board business.

Almost everyone is familiar with the Hillary Clinton email scandal that was created by her personal email server in her home.

Why is a District server-based email address important?

All official email is subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). 

There is no way to know if, from time to time, Elkins or Holmes deletes an official email. There are, or should be, procedures in District Policy for deleting official email. The rule is probably "Don't delete anything."

More importantly, official emails are subject to FOIA. If the District were to ask Holmes or Elkins to search for a certain email or group of emails, how would the District be certain that the search was thorough and that every pertinent email had been found?

One of these days Elkins will no longer be on the board. What happens then to all the emails in her account? Will she just delete them? And then, if asked to produce one or more, say, "Oops"?

And what about Holmes and her personal email address? She has been acting "as if" she is a board member since November 13, 2018. All of the emails to/from her personal email address that are about school board business are official emails and subject to FOIA.

If, one of these days, it is finally decided that she has not been a legal board member, will she have to turn over all those emails to the District? Or if, one of these days, she is not re-elected to the board, what happens to her emails then?

Richland 2 is one of the largest school districts in the state and has a massive email system. With a $300,000,000 budget and even more in assets, it is not one of the tiny, financially-strapped school districts unable to afford its own email system. 

It is time for the Board to "tell" the superintendent to set up official email addresses for Elkins (and they'll do it for Holmes, too) and tell the women to use only the official email address for school district business. The District can avoid huge problems in the future by having control over retention of all official emails to and from its board members.