Last week, Tamar Galatzan told the Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council that the LAUSD school board did not approve the controversial policy to automatically delete any email that was not specifically saved after one year. She maintained that it was “a staff decision. We did not approve it.” She also said that the “board doesn’t like” the idea.
While it is true that the Board has suspended the program while it holds hearings on the matter, this was only done after it voted 6-0 in September to spend $294,500 on a program that would make these deletions. When George McKenna, who abstained from the vote, asked why the one year term was chosen, the specific answer was because this was the term specified in the two-year old policy bulletin that Ms. Galatzan is now trying to distance herself from. Even if the Board did not approve the original policy, the vote for the computer program to make the deletions was a de-facto approval of the bulletin.
Tomorrow, Ms. Galatzan will hold the first public meeting of her Task Force on Email Retention and Destruction. Having access to old emails is crucial for anyone who needs to investigate how this district is being run. Unfortunately, this task force is clearly a case of the fox guarding the hen house as a fair hearing cannot be expected when the chairperson has already given her approval for the policy. Tellingly, the hearing will not be available on video stream.