Despite the fact that one clueless student posted a really lame comment on my last blog, A Principal Without Principles: What, Me Worry? (https://www.votersopinion.com/
As Gary Nelson of CBS Miami (a/k/a Channel 4) reported in his online story, Personal Info Theft Puts Students and Parents At Risk (http://miami.cbslocal.com/
I see that Principal Raymond L. Fontana just got right on it and alerted the victims of this serious crime immediately!
It only took 10 days.
Way to go, Ace!
I guess Principal Fontana is about as clueless as Little Miss Muffet. He just couldn’t be bothered by “all this silliness” to make sure the students and their parents were notified as soon as their sensitive information was stolen right out from under his nose.
Of course, this is nowhere as important to him as the school’s football team’s “perfect” season: Zero wins, Ten losses. Yeah, that was money well spent, huh?
There is absolutely no excuse for Principal Fontana’s punishing his students and parents for ten whole days (one day for every football defeat, I guess) until he finally decided to let them know that, according to Channel 4, “more than 2,000” of “the students’ social security numbers, dates of birth, addresses, their parents’ names, their parents’ places of employment and home, work and cell phone numbers” were now in the hands of a thief or thieves, who had more than enough time to whip up false identification and obtain credit cards in the students’ names with the stolen information. Well, someone’s gonna have a White Christmas, huh? Just saying.
Obviously Little Miss Muffet is completely uninformed as to the seriousness (which is the opposite of “silliness”) of such a disaster. There is absolutely no end to the havoc this theft may wreak on those 2,000 students and their parents, especially for those students going to college and hoping to get financial aid, which is based on credit history, among other things.
Luckily, there are safeguards in place. As reported by Channel 4’s Gary Nelson:
“Rod Griffin, a spokesperson for Experian, one of the nation’s three major credit reporting agencies, said North Miami Beach students and their parents should notify Experian or one of the other credit agencies – Equifax or TransUnion – and have an alert placed on their accounts.
“The parents should have an alert placed on their accounts, too, because a good deal of their personal information was also compromised,” Griffin said.
If any credit agency is notified, it will share the information with the other two.
Accounts will be monitored for free for 90 days to guard against anyone fradulently using the stolen information to get credit to make purchases or withdraw cash.
Those reporting the North Miami Beach High School theft should give the credit agency the case number assigned to the investigation by Miami-Dade Schools police: T-05319.
There are also a variety of agencies that will constantly monitor your credit activity for an extended period of time, but for a fee.
The letter to parents and students from the school system also urges them to call the Federal Trade Commission(FTC) to get “detailed information to help you deter, detect and defend against any use of compromised information.” The FTC can be reached at 1-877-438-4338.”
The Gadfly, however, recommends that the parents at North Miami Beach Senior High School contact their School Board Representative Dr. Martin Karp (martinkarp@dadeschools.net) immediately. They should request (actually, demand) that the District provide the extended (as in “lifetime”) services of a credit monitoring agency for every student at the school at no charge to them or their parents. The cost of this service should be paid out of the Principal’s Discretionary Fund, which in the case of NMB includes pretty much every dime that the school receives from the county, the state, and everywhere else, the majority of which now somehow ends up funneled into the football program. This cost should not be paid for by the School Board or the County, since the taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for Principal Fontana’s screw up.
Channel 4’s article goes on to state:
“Wayne Black, of Wayne Black and Associates, a security consulting firm was slack-jawed to learn of the breach at the High School.
“Index cards? Are you kidding me?” Black said, adding that in this age of identity theft, personal information should be encrypted and kept on computers, not lying around in unsecured file drawers.”
Ya think??? That’s exactly what I wrote in my last column about this mess!
The article closes with, “Ironically, the school that kept students’ personal information on index cards in a file drawer, offers “Information Technology” as one of its major courses of study.”
Maybe Principal Fontana should have considered taking one of those courses himself. Sure, I’d much rather watch a football game, too. But, then again I’m not in charge of an entire high school. Or the safety and security of 2,000 students.
Apparently, neither is he.
Stephanie Kienzle
“Spreading the Wealth”
While there are a number of valid points addressed in your blog regarding the seriousness of the recent emergency cards theft, the constant berating of the football team detracts from any intelligence you may have reported. You clearly are misinformed about the funding of the football program, the value it adds to the lives of those playing the sport and the importance of an administration supporting its students.
Principle Fontana may well be negligent in ensuring the confidentiality of personal information but trying to attack his credibility by criticizing his attendance at football games is desperate reporting. Making the claim that the “majority” of the principles discretionary fund gets “funneled” into the football program is slanderous. Equating the W/L record of the football team to “money well spent” is ignorant (would it be well spent if they had won every game?) and ridiculing a teenage child for expressing their opinion is immature.
As an adult and a professional blogger you have a right to state your opinion, it’s what bloggers do, but you also have a responsibility to state true facts. It is a shame that your own personal dislike for football would cause you to exaggerate truth and apparently outright lie.
Students and community people are reading your blog – that is a good thing, don’t abuse it.
Christina, thanks for writing. You have definitely made some good points that I will take under consideration. For the record, I am not a “professional blogger,” but I appreciate your thinking so.
The irony is that I happen to be a huge football fan. Anyone who knows me will tell you that football is one of my passions in life. Not only do I NOT have a “personal dislike for football,” but I actually live for football season. I guess you don’t know me.
My point is not that Principal Fontana attends the games or cares immensely about the football program, which I do think is admirable, but that he places more importance on football than on academics, which I feel is abhorrent. He has decimated several other programs by surplussing or firing highly qualified teachers and replacing them with coaches for the sole purpose of giving them teaching jobs so they can remain on staff. Fontana has also ignored the arts and entertainment programs, which are equally important, in my opinion. The sciences and social studies programs have also suffered in recent years. As for the “funneling” of money, I happen to know that a particular teacher won a huge monetary award for a project that she entered into a national competition. Instead of giving her even half the money for her program, Fontana took the entire amount and purchased football uniforms. While, technically he had a right to use the money any way he saw fit, if he had any decency, he would have allotted at least some of that money to the program of the teacher who actually won the award. Additionally, in 2009 I was on the EESAC committee. At the end of that school year, the committee voted to give five laptop computers to deserving but economically disadvantaged students who were going to college. This was a done deal. NONE of those five students ever received a computer. Do you know where that money went? I sure don’t, but a good guess would be the football team.
As a blogger and a humorist, I write this column for the purpose of informing the residents of North Miami Beach of things I find interesting, scandalous, entertaining and downright stupid. What I write is based on facts, but my commentary is my opinion. Depending on the subject matter and my mood, my comments will be sarcastic, critical, funny, outrageous, snarky, or just plain irreverent.
As for your concern about my “ridiculing a teenage child for expressing their opinion,” I have made it very clear that this is an adult oriented column. If you have read any of my previous blogs, you’d know that anyone and everyone who attempts to post a comment is fair game for a rebuttal. If a child, teenage or otherwise, wishes to comment and makes intelligent points that will add to the discussion, I have no problem publishing them and respecting their opinions. But if a child has the chutzpah, not to mention the stupidity, to make dumbass remarks and tell me to go f**k myself, he or she had better be prepared for a counter-punch. Then all bets are off. I’m just saying.