RTKL Appeal: Penn-Lea emails
Lea is getting some Penn money but the School District doesn’t want to share too many details.
I’m interested in what the back-and-forth between Penn and the School District to hammer out the details of this partnership looked like. Under the RTKL, you typically cannot access an agency’s internal, predecisional deliberations. But an agency’s communications with an outside entity are fair game. It’s obvious why Penn would choose Lea as the next school to receive its extra financial support. But how does the District react to such an offer? What kind of restrictions on this funding are discussed? Do they acknowledge how it will exacerbate the inequality between Cedar Park/Garden Court and the rest of the 3rd district? Do they discuss a longer-term plan to address that by expanding partnerships with more schools?
Since the announcement, for sale signs in the neighborhood have been adding on a tag that says “Lea Catchment” and prices are still up, or at least holding steady while interest rates have almost doubled.
these signs have been popping up lately on houses for sale
maybe they were there before and i just never noticed
I submitted a Right-to-Know request for the following on March 17, 2022, asking for:
A copy of all e-mails, correspondence, and other written communications between the Philadelphia School District and the University of Pennsylvania relating to the University’s partnership with Henry C. Lea school sent or received between January 1, 2021 and present.
The District denied this request, claiming it was insufficiently specific. In response to my appeal filed with the Office of Open Records, they explained:
Based on that explanation, I think the School District’s response was fair. That’s a wide-ranging partnership, and I just want to know about the money. I withdrew my appeal and filed a new request on May 5, 2022. This time, I asked for:
A copy of all correspondence between the School District of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania sent or received between January 1, 2021 and present relating to the University's grant commitment of $816,500 per academic year beginning on 7/1/2022 and ending on 6/30/2027, as described in the Memorandum of Understanding considered by the Board at its 1/27/2022 meeting. (I attached a copy of the Memorandum of Understanding to the Request)
The District again argued this was insufficiently specific, which is was not. The Office of Open Records issued a final determination directing them to search for and produce responsive records:
Here’s the OOR docket: https://www.openrecords.pa.gov/Appeals/DocketSheet.cfm?docket=20221209
Rather than produce the responsive records as ordered to by the Office of Open Records, the District filed an appeal to the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas on 7/14/22.
This is annoying for a few little reasons: 1) delay, 2) Common Pleas court has filing fees 3) I have to write another brief on this. More frustrating is the fact that this public school district is so shameless about hiding information that is squarely within the purview of the RTKL.
The legal issue is pretty straightforward: was my request sufficiently specific under Section 703 of the Right-to-Know Law? Section 703 states, in part: “A written request should identify or describe the records sought with sufficient specificity to enable the agency to ascertain which records are being requested and shall include the name and address to which the agency should address its response.”
Pennsylvania caselaw sets out a three-part test to assess whether a request is sufficiently specific. You look at whether there is a clear 1) scope, 2) subject matter, and 3) timeframe. Here, the scope is clearly defined (communications between the District and Penn), the subject matter is narrow (the $800k/year grant commitment) and the timeframe is definite (1/1/21 to present). The District is trying to argue that I didn’t provide specific individuals whose emails I’m looking for, therefore they cannot search for records. However, it is in fact their responsibility to make a basic inquiry as to who would have responsive records. There won’t be any groundbreaking or novel legal arguments here.
Next steps are to wait for a briefing schedule, then write my brief.