Good for the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition (CFOIC), which went to bat for a parent seeking the names of teachers at his daughter’s school who called in sick in September to protest Jefferson County school board policies.
At first, according to the coalition, the district rejected Kyle Walpole’s open-records request on the grounds that it pertained to “confidential medical information.”
At that point, an attorney for the CFOIC weighed in on Walpole’s behalf, noting that he merely sought the names of the teachers who took sick leave and had no interest in “any records disclosing the reason (condition or treatment) that prompted or was associated with the sick leave.”
In another words, physician-patient confidentiality was not at stake.
Nor could it have been, of course, for an even more fundamental reason: Most of the teachers who called in sick at Conifer and Standley Lake high schools on Sept. 18 — necessitating the schools’ closure — presumably weren’t sick in the first place. They were exploiting sick leave to make a political point at the expense of students and the convenience of parents, and in defiance of their professional responsibilities.
To their credit, Jeffco officials reconsidered and promised to release the names.
If public employees — not just teachers but also police, highway workers or, for that matter, secretaries — use sick leave en masse as a means of protest, they shouldn’t expect to hide behind a shield of anonymity. As Walpole noted, such actions “cost the district and the taxpayers a tremendous amount of wasted school heating costs and personnel expenses.”
The district obviously knew who the teachers were who pulled the stunt. Why shouldn’t the people who pay the bills know, too?
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