Dear Editor
I was hoping that we, as a town, had moved on from 2021’s unredacted emails incident. Our children’s personally identifiable medical information was released via a public records request by the school district and subsequently posted online. Shawn Brandt was one of 5 individuals that received this information, and a Main Street resident published the emails online to their public website for all to see. This was a polarizing incident which resulted in multiple families being apologized to by Mr. Brandt as well as the School Committee.
Fast forward to today, that Main Street resident now has a “Shawn Brandt for School Committee” sign in his yard. The same resident that Mr. Brandt claimed to not know or have any interaction with. The same resident that has been convicted of a felony and 2 misdemeanor charges, and slapped with a restraining order, all stemming from this email incident.
In his own words, this line of text was posted to Mr. Brandt’s Facebook campaign page timeline, but he has now hidden the post from his feed: “Unfortunately, only a day or two later, someone else who received the emails posted them publicly, including the sensitive student information. I was then and am still horrified that the town’s process for redacting these records failed, and that they were then posted publicly, but I want to be clear that I had absolutely no involvement in any aspect of the breach, distribution or publication of this information. Nor did I have any knowledge of the involvement of others.”
I ask you now Mr. Brandt, are you still horrified? Horrified enough to host a campaign sign on the lawn of the Main Street resident that caused our children and families’ pain? A convicted felon with a restraining order to stay away from the children that he hurt. Is this someone who should be setting policy for our children? Do we trust him to keep them safe? Is this a candidate that shares the Town’s community values? I’m asking every resident to pull your Brandt signs out of the ground as a sign of solidarity that our kids come first because Mr. Brandt chose a prominent sign location over them and will do it again in a heartbeat.
Alicia & Seth Williams
Marla Lane
