As PTA Groups Move Online, So Does Dissension

"What she did is free the list, is what I would say," said Janis Sartucci, a parent at Winston Churchill High School in Potomac. "Like something out of the '60s. She liberated the list."

* * *

Battles for the control of an e-mail list -- judging who may post, what may be said and with how much candor -- have raged at schools across the region, particularly in communities with large numbers of inquisitive parents and wireless Internet hot spots. Parents face off against one another or against school administrators, some of whom view e-mail lists as rumor mills on steroids.

Last year, PTA leaders at Glen Haven Elementary School in Silver Spring told members they were thinking of shutting down the school e-mail list, which had fallen into neglect.

Jennifer Richards, a parent, offered to take over. She set up a new e-mail list over the summer and returned to the PTA board in August, only to find that the board had decided to eliminate the list.

Richards did some research and learned that a vote of PTA members could override a decision of the board. At a fall PTA meeting, she forced a vote. It went 10 to 8 in favor of keeping the list.

"It was a rough meeting," said Sandy Patterson, another Glen Haven parent who attended.

Allegations of elitism were directed at the list proponents, whose school serves many low-income and immigrant parents. PTA leaders noted that an inattentive moderator had allowed penile-enlargement spam onto the list.

Richards believes the principal and PTA sought to eliminate the list to muzzle parents. Neither the principal nor the PTA president, who is a paid employee of the school, answered interview requests.

"When parents communicate, they learn from each other," Richards said. "And a principal who wants complete and utter control of her school does not want parents to communicate."

Sartucci, one of the most vocal parent activists in the county, moderates and posts regularly to an e-mail list sponsored by the Parents Coalition of Montgomery County, a political action committee. The Parents Coalition list has come to resemble a forum on Churchill High, Sartucci said, "because we don't have another way of exchanging information."

Churchill's PTSA publishes an e-mail newsletter called Bulldog Blips.