Fosters: Administrators defend blog OR principal said led to her leaving

Counterpoint to recent criticism of this blog today in an article by reporter Roni Reino in today's edition of Fosters:

Administrators defend blog OR principal said led to her leaving

By RONI REINO
rreino@fosters.com
Saturday, July 2, 2011

DURHAM — Administrators for an online blog are saying the former high school principal should not have blamed "a piece of software" for her resignation, while adding the blog's original intent was to encourage community conversation.

Last week, Laura Rogers released the contents of her resignation letter that stated past and present School Board members were supporting "anonymous, vitriolic comments" posted on the online forum Oyster River Community Resource. She also said comments from the community were "hurtful."

Rogers said although board member may have not endorsed such a "bullying" type behavior, they participated in posting content.

One of the blog administrators, Seth Fiermonti, said although he understands how Rogers may have felt attacked, the blog is only a means to allow the public to converse, and comments would have been said in the community despite the existence of the blog.

"I feel there is one specific statement in her characterization that is, somehow anybody who posts on that blog agrees with what was said on the blog," said blog administrator Tom Bebbington. "You can't refuse to agree with people that disagree with you. I thought that the letter got that wrong."

Neither Fiermonti or Bebbington said they know Rogers personally, but said it seemed unreasonable to point at the blog for her leaving the district.

The two began the blog back in 2008 after becoming frustrated with an "unresponsive" School Board that was making decisions about an unfair bidding process that seemed to be going unnoticed. Both said writing letters to the newspaper or directly to the School Board didn't seem to make a difference, and creating an free online forum seemed the best way to get everyone involved.

"We didn't feel that we were reaching out to enough people, and it wasn't a conversation," Bebbington said.

Fiermonti said he has reached out to current School Board members and asked them to contribute to the blog in hopes of keeping everyone on the same page. He said he hopes to continue to keep the community conversation going.

"It's bigger than we first thought it was going to be," Fiermonti said. "But it's definitely serving a purpose. The fact it got so popular just means it is meeting a need that wasn't met elsewhere."

The site has had more than 16,000 unique views [UPDATE: 125,000 unique views - ed.] over the three years it has been running, and administrators admit some may be duplicates, but said it's a testament to how many people read it.

In her last days as high school principal, Rogers said the anonymous comments had gone too far and made negative and hurtful comments toward school officials and staff.

Blog administrators said while the anonymity of comments allowed people to comment freely, they have in the last few months asked commenters to "sign-in" with a username by linking to their Facebook page or an instant messenger profile. People are still allowed to use pseudonyms to post comments.

Both Fiermonti and Bebbington said they believe over the last three years the added community input has helped shaped a better and more open School Board, whether or not people had to put their name to their comments.

"I think the current (school) board has made great strides in openness and communication," Bebbington said. "I think that is a positive development."