Seattle Schools Community Forum

Congrats to the Ballard High School Talisman newspaper. From an SPS tweet: The 2016 # NHSJC Best of Show award for Newspaper, Tabloid 17+ pages goes to The Talisman ( @ BallardTalisman ) from Ballard HS! The newspaper staff also won several individual awards. As well, there was this tweet: Washington Achievement Award April 18, 2016 A total of 258 schools earned for 2015. 16 Award-winning schools in @ seapubschools inc @ Sanislo

This morning the Times has an article about Superintendent Nyland.  Here's what I said in the Times' comment section:

I have a huge amount of news that all came nearly at the same time.  I am still gathering information about how you can directly complain to various agencies including OSPI, DOE and the Washington Bar Association.  I hope to get that thread info by Monday. First, the district has created a webpage on the issue, Student Information Protection. It has the Superintendent's latest letter to the entire SPS community which includes this:

I am seeking information far and wide on what parents with students affected by the data breach can do in terms of filing complaints.  I believe there may be multiple avenues of complaints about the district and at least one for the law firm.  I have no idea if you can sue (maybe for negligence?), so you need to get a lawyer to answer that question. I am troubled that so many call this "a mistake."  Once maybe but more than once? Incredibly sloppy.  I still don't get that the law firm, when they got that data, didn't do a random check just to make sure it was redacted (if only to protect themselves.) I mean, isn't the district paying them to do due diligence? Stay tuned and I'll let you know what I find out. As for the John Hay/Interagency situation , an update from the Queen Anne View (bold mine):

 Update: The Times is saying that the guardian did not just bring it to the law firm's attention weeks ago that he received unasked for student data but that he told the district.  And yet got even more student data after that notification.  If true, this would support the guardian's thought (and mine) that the district and the law firm were trying to bury him with masses of data.  That would mean that somewhere in the district someone did not bother to redact anything, possibly not thinking of the consequences of sending out a huge volume of data.  Because if some of the records had been redacted, that would have been an accident.  To me, that none were, then it seems a deliberate action, possibly done in a lazy fashion. The Times also reports that "the district asked (the guardian) to return or destroy the records so that they can be replaced by a set that doesn't reveal confidential student information."  I'll have to ask if that means he wou...

I am absolutely amazed that people believe (a) there's nothing that can be done about privacy and (b) it's all for the good so why worry. We're adults and that's okay.  But kids?  How do they defend their privacy?  Right.  That's our job. I want to say in advance, people can take any kind of photo they want on their phone.  (But you might want to warn teenagers of the devastating outcomes if they do this. And trusting a friend/boyfriend/girlfriend is playing with fire in the teen years.) But understand, there are smart people who want data - of any kind - to use for their own purposes.  You are not wrong for taking a photo; you are wrong to believe there is security in any kind of devise that you have apps or data that uploads to any data cloud.   Here's the story of multiple celebs and their nude photos - taken on iPhones - and hacked out of the Apple"cloud."   Experts are looking at whether a flaw in Apple’s iPhone operating system...