School districts spend tax payer money on technology, yet the officials who make this budget requests know nothing about that they are purchasing. The Julie Amero case is an example of a school district that failed to install its software correctly, and then blamed a substitute teacher for the results of an easily prevented incident. More coverage from Rick Green at The Courant;

To believe that Julie Amero deserves to go to jail for exposing her students to pornography takes some work.

You have to accept that a pregnant substitute teacher decided that the right moment to start surfing porn was the Tuesday morning in 2004 when she sat before a classroom of seventh-graders at Kelly Middle School in Norwich.

You have to believe a police officer with relatively little computer detective training instead of programming experts around the world.

You must also believe that the Internet security of the Norwich schools could be penetrated by a part-time teacher described as computer illiterate.

What is really outrageous is that the Norwich Superintendent Pam Aubin, is allowed to to continue on her job after this. For if the internet control software that was supposedly installed on all Norwich school computers was working, then none of this would have happened. Computer illiteracy should be a requirement for dismissal of any board of education official.

UPDATE

The story is finally circulating, though it took awhile since the 14th for people to realize what an outrage this is. My Left Nutnmeg finally picked it up and contributes that The Washington Post and Alternet have picked up on it. From the WP:

I had a chance this week to speak with the accused, Windham, Conn., resident Julie Amero. Amero described herself as the kind of person who can hardly find the power button on a computer, saying she often relies on written instructions from her husband explaining how to access e-mail, sign into instant messaging accounts and other relatively simple tasks.

On the morning of Oct 19, 2004, Amero said she reported for duty at a seventh grade classroom at Kelly Middle School in Norwich, Conn. After stepping out into the hall for a moment, Amero returned to find two students hovering over the computer at the teacher’s desk. As supported by an analysis of her computer during the court proceedings, the site the children were looking at was a seemingly innocuous hairstyling site called “new-hair-styles.com.” Amero said that shortly thereafter, she noticed a series of new Web browser windows opening up displaying pornographic images, and that no matter how quickly she closed each one out, another would pop up in its place.

“I went back to computer and found a bunch of pop-ups,” Amero said. “They wouldn’t go away. I mean, some of the sites stayed on there no matter how many times I clicked the red X, and others would just pop back up.”

Amero said she panicked and ran down the hall to the teacher’s lounge to ask for help. “I dared not turn the the computer off. The teacher had asked me not to sign him out” of the computer, she recalled. Amero said none of the teachers in the lounge moved to help her, and that another teacher later told her to ignore the ads, that they were a common annoyance. Later on, prosecutors would ask why she hadn’t just thrown a coat or a sweater over monitor. On that day Amero hadn’t worn either.

The school district in Norwich is ill served by the current superintendent.