Everett teachers union seeks surveillance hearing

EVERETT — The Everett teachers union says it will file a complaint against the Everett School District over the district's videotape surveillance of a high-school teacher's classroom for about a month last year.

The union says the district violated labor practices and employees' rights and is calling for an open hearing about how the recordings, which are now missing, were used, The Herald reported Wednesday.

District Superintendent Carol Whitehead revealed Friday in a two-page letter to district employees that the district used a video camera to tape English and journalism teacher Kay Powers' classroom between May 10 and June 11, 2007.

Last month, a district lawyer had denied that a surveillance camera was used.

The surveillance was done to determine who was entering and leaving the classroom on weekends, Whitehead said, adding that it is the 18,500-student district's "paramount duty to protect students."

"I don't believe we have violated any laws," she said.

School Board members have declined to comment on Whitehead's statement.

Powers was placed on leave in June and fired in November for helping students publish an underground newspaper despite a warning not to do so. She was reinstated in April to a teaching post at Henry M. Jackson High School after reaching a settlement with the district.

In her letter, Whitehead said Powers was fired because she spent hours alone with a student producing an underground newspaper, violating curfew and district driving rules.

Powers also misused school computers, equipment and software, Whitehead wrote.

Powers and the students involved knew their "own behaviors were hush, hush," she said.

Mitch Cogdill, a lawyer for the teachers union, said that had the case gone to a hearing, the district would not have been able to prove those allegations.

"If all this is true, why did she hire [Powers] back?" Cogdill asked. "Isn't she being negligent in doing so if it's true?"

Teachers-union leaders voted Tuesday to file an unfair-labor practice complaint with the Public Employees Relations Commission in Olympia.

School officials defended the practice of using video cameras, which are commonly used in hallways and parking lots.

"Video cameras are used as needed to ensure the safety of students, staff or public policy," district spokeswoman Mary Waggoner said. "The public expects that when we have information causing us to believe that students are being harmed or that adults or property are in danger, we will investigate and take protective measures. Video cameras are throughout the district, including as you walk through the front door of this office."

After the union last month accused the district of secretly taping Powers, Whitehead hired a Seattle lawyer to independently investigate what the district did.

Mike Patterson, the investigator, said he found "no evidence that any audio recordings were made of Kay Powers," according to Whitehead's letter.

It's illegal in Washington to make an audio recording of an individual without prior consent.