By Lori Carlson, Correspondent 

The state commissioner of administration has determined that a letter from School Board Member Chris Lind regarding possible litigation against the Prior Lake-Savage Area School District should remain classified as private personnel data.

The district received the notice of claim letter from Lind’s attorney, David Thompson, on Dec. 19, 2007. The letter sought mediation relating to a monetary settlement for Lind’s termination from employment as a Prior Lake High School campus supervisor.

The commissioner upheld earlier decisions on private personnel data, citing Section 13.43 of the state statute, which classifies data on current or former employees of a government entity as private personnel data, with few exceptions.

Lind was terminated from his position in June 2007. According to the district, Lind was fired after making a comment about a student’s sexual orientation, and he had been given previous warnings about his interaction with students. Lind then ran for and was elected to the School Board in November. Following his election, some residents started a petition asking for Lind to release his personnel file and/or resign from the board. To date, 584 people have signed the online petition.

In her opinion, Commissioner Dana Badgerow also determined that a small portion of another document the district received regarding Lind should be classified as public data. The document, the nature of which is not entirely clear, contains the following statements that the commissioner deemed public: “… a parent group has started a petition drive with the intent to force Mr. Lind from the board. The petition can be found at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/719cares/.”

The opinion states that “the commissioner believes those statements relate solely to Mr. Lind’s status as a School Board member, and as such are public data.”

Since the school district has no policy regarding data about School Board members, the commissioner interpreted that to mean the district does not consider board members to be public employees. Therefore, the data collected on Lind as a board member is considered public.

However, the nature of the second document – the one relating to the petition drive – is unclear, and how much of that document will be made public by the district has yet to be determined.

The school district’s attorney requested the advisory opinion in January to determine the classification of data collected on Lind. Attorneys for the Prior Lake American and the Star Tribune also submitted comments in support of an opinion from the commissioner.

Mark Anfinson, attorney for the Prior Lake American, said he's not surprised by the commissioner's decision.

“I assumed they’d hold that to be private personnel data because they’d done that in previous opinions,” Anfinson said Monday. “Everything is presumed to be private, unless it’s explicitly listed in the statute as public.”