Letter to the Editor : BOE threatens law enforcement – over emails

At the January 12 Fayette County Board of Education work session, district leaders briefly referenced “excessive emails” from parents and floated the idea of involving other government agencies and law enforcement to “manage” some of these concerns, then moved on.

Eighteen thousand emails is a lot for any system. But volume is not the problem; it is a symptom. When an email insinuates a threat of injury, law enforcement should absolutely be called. When parents send persistent, detailed questions or cite laws and regulations, that is not a police matter. That is a school system accountability matter.

The public was given no explanation of how those numbers were calculated or what kinds of issues generated the emails. Was one message copied to ten people and counted as ten? Are these complaints about sports playing time, or are they about children with disabilities not receiving services required by law? Lumping everything together and invoking “AI‑generated” emails avoids the harder questions.

Families of children with disabilities have been repeatedly gaslit, dismissed, or told that problems do not exist or will be fixed later, so they have learned that careful documentation is necessary to protect their children. Email is not harassment; it is self‑defense in a system that too often denies what it cannot ignore.

When a school system treats persistent questions about IEPs and special education services as a threat instead of a warning sign, it has its priorities backwards. Parents of students with disabilities are legally recognized as equal members of the IEP team, not potential cases to be handed off to law enforcement or other agencies to intimidate special needs families.

The Board should be asking: What is driving these emails? Are there staffing shortages, delays in services, or systemic barriers in Exceptional Children Services that need to be addressed? What steps is the district taking to fix those problems instead of silencing the people who report them?

By letting the moment pass with only surface‑level comments, the Board chose to sidestep transparency and avoid accountability. Fayette County families deserve a full, public conversation about how this district is treating parent advocacy, and whether the response to overwhelmed inboxes will be to solve the underlying problems—or to intimidate the parents raising them.

Add this to the list of growing concerns that others have also raised to The Citizen.

Chip Glazier

Peachtree City