District responds to Onalaska school board member’s allegations, which he says went to F.B.I.

Jake Speed says he had enough evidence to contact bureau.

Last week Onalaska school board member Jake Speed made some serious allegations about the district that he had sent to the F.B.I. (story below).

The Onalaska School District responded in a statement:

The School District of Onalaska wishes to comment on statements that have reportedly been made by a School Board Member, Mr. Jake Speed. Mr. Speed’s reported claims that the School District of Onalaska is sending him electronic files with “malicious content” is completely false. Over 3,000 people have access to the District’s email system, including Board Members, administrators, faculty, staff, and students. Thousands of emails and attachments circulate through this medium every day. Even with this number of users, there has never been any indication that materials sent through the District’s email system are compromised in this manner. In fact, our staff takes care to ensure the integrity of District technologies. Mr. Speed has personally reported to District officials that his personal emails are merged through practices that involve multiple, different websites and/or email addresses. We have encouraged Mr. Speed to consider how these and related practices on his part may contribute to computer problems that other Board Members do not experience when they receive the exact same communications that are sent to Mr. Speed. The District also understands that Mr. Speed has reportedly stated that he “filed a complaint with the Cyber Crimes Division of the FBI.” The District will cooperate fully with any FBI investigation in this matter and sincerely looks forward to the opportunity to have the FBI or other competent agency investigate Mr. Speed’s claims, including a full and complete investigation of Mr. Speed’s own computer systems. In the interim, the District is asking Mr. Speed for a copy of any complaint that he has filed with the FBI. The District also expects that Mr. Speed will take all necessary steps to ensure evidence on his personal computer systems is not deleted or altered in any way pending any investigation.

ORIGINAL STORY:

Onalaska school board member Jake Speed sounded off on the school district trying to, apparently, send him computer viruses through email.

“They’re sending me files with some sort of malicious content attached from the school district, and Yahoo! has actually blacklisted their domain,” Speed explained Thursday. “So, I filed a complaint with the cyber crimes division of the F.B.I.”

Speed says the district’s indifference to his complaint led him to take action.

“Since they weren’t willing to work with me on this and then they called me a liar, I decided that I have enough evidence, I believe, to send to the F.B.I.,” Speed said.

Speed reached out to a virus company after all of the emails ended up in the spam folder. 

About a year ago, Speed was voted onto the school board after filing a complaint with the elections board. That complaint forced opponents Ann Garrity – the board president at the time – and Tim Smaby off the ballot because of incomplete nomination papers. Both had to, then, run write-in campaigns, which may have helped get Speed the votes he needed – being the only one on the ballot.

Garrity won the other open position, while Smaby was added to the board after a retirement later in the year.

Summarizing his first 10 months on the board, where he has been in verbal arguments with other members, Speed calls it an “Orwellian nightmare.”

“I’m sick to my stomach going to these meetings and it’s because of the lack of ethics,” Speed said. “When I’m dealing with absolutely no ethics whatsoever. You know there’s rules. And you follow these rules. And they have a victory because they cheat. That part gets frustrating.”

Speed also has filed a complaint with the local DA alleging open-meeting-law violations. 

The district said it will comment on Speed’s complaint Friday.