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SATURDAY, MARCH 7, 2015 | Vol. 91, No. 19 | WWW.SOUTHWHIDBEYRECORD.COM | 75¢
Apple concedes Whidbey map errors, promises fix By JUSTIN BURNETT South Whidbey Record After three years of complaints, tech giant Apple Inc. acknowledged two major Whidbey Island errors on its mobile map program this week and promised to have at least one of the problems fixed within
two months. Island County Commissioner Helen Price Johnson broke the good news late Thursday afternoon with a call to The Record, saying she’d been contacted by a company representative and assured the Langley issue was being addressed. “He said it would be fixed before May 1,”
Price Johnson said. The Whidbey error is also being tackled, but it wasn’t immediately clear whether it would be fixed within the same timeframe. Apple Maps, a navigational program that comes built-in to mobile devices such as iPhones, iPads and laptop computers, currently says Langley and Whidbey Island are
both located on Hat Island, a small privately owned isle located in Possession Sound between Everett and South Whidbey. Directions to either destination instruct drivers to take a small passenger-only SEE APPLE, A8
Parents object, challenge schools records policy By JUSTIN BURNETT South Whidbey Record
Ben Watanabe / The Record
Peter Van Giesen, a Campers Row Walk resident in Clinton, surveys the damage of a mudslide just north of his home.
Clinton landslide claims another Brighton Beach cabin By BEN WATANABE South Whidbey Record A large slide of earth and trees crashed into a Clinton beachfront cabin, knocking it off its foundation and forcing Island County to restrict entry and occupancy. In late February, a rush of mud, clay, water, trees and brush slid from a 200-foot high bluff and down toward Puget Sound, wrecking one Campers Row Walk structure and filling another with sediment. Both are owned by the same family. There were no injuries or fatalities from the slide. The two buildings have since been red tagged by county regulators, meaning they may not be entered for safety reasons. They belonged to the Wood family, siblings who were out of town when
the mudslide occurred. Mud accumulated high enough to reach the bluffside eaves of the first story of the northern-most cabin. “I haven’t dared go up there,” said owner Frances Wood, who writes The Record’s Whidbey Birding column. “There’s been such a long history of family times there it’s frankly hard to imagine that that’s gone,” she added. Island County restricted occupancy after a geotechnical expert reviewed the site Feb. 26. On Feb. 27, Island County posted the red tags on the exterior of the buildings, which are surrounded by an increasingly thick flow of sticky sediment. SEE LANDSLIDE, A8
A South Whidbey School District policy to name online the requestors of public records may be a violation of federal student privacy laws. Open government champions have expressed concern that the policy may run afoul of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, commonly referred to as FERPA. The rules protect student education records from public disclosure, and apply to all schools that receive U.S. Department of Education funding, including South Whidbey. Several parents have now joined those raising concern about the policy, specifically its implications concerning FERPA, and they’ve either already taken or are considering legal action against the school district. Superintendent Jo Moccia this week confirmed that the district’s online document has been modified to reflect some of those concerns, but that there is disagreement about whether a FERPA violation has actually occurred. “The district disagrees with the legal interpretation,” she said. Completely separate and autonomous from the state’s Open Public Records Act, which allows the publication of requestors identities, FERPA prohibits the release of records to anyone but adult students and parents. The problem is they are different sets of rules with different requirements, and that means the requests can’t be handled the same way. Specifically, listing FERPA requestors with those who have asked for records under the state records act is not permitted, according to Michele Earl-
Hubbard, president of Allied Law Group and one of the state’s leading open government attorneys. “If they are treating these as the same thing, they are breaking federal privacy laws,” she said. Earl-Hubbard is vice president of the Washington Coalition for Open Government, a non-partisan and non-profit organization that works through the courts and the state Legislature to defend and strengthen Washington’s open government laws. The school’s online document, first posted in December, listed the identities of requestors who voluntarily gave their names, what they asked for and the estimated cost to the district to satisfy the request. It listed people who made state records requests, but also at least two parents who asked for student documents. Both say they asked school district officials to remove their names and the details of their requests, but changes weren’t made until this week. The modification came in the wake of Clinton residents Mark Helpenstell’s and Tisa Seely’s reading of a letter from their attorney to the school board at the group’s February meeting. They alleged that identifing Helpenstell online violated a number of statutes, but particularly FERPA. Boiled down, they contend that in a small community like South Whidbey it all but named their child. Also, listing the details of such requests alerts the public to the existence of certain kinds of records. For example, if a parent asks for disciplinary records and the request is published then the genSEE POLICY, A8