California School Districts under Scrutiny for their Failure to Release Public Records

Published on August 3rd, 2011
Written by Public Record Finder Staff

Public records requests have become the subject of extensive scrutiny over the years. The lack of movement from local town agencies to supply the public with records has led to widespread lawsuits, investigations and loss of employment.

Under recent investigation are California and the school system. The uproar started with the investigation into the La-Honda Pescadero Unified School District. This district was having problems with lawsuits, managing school construction projects, and a superintendent's resignation.

A parent in the San Mateo County district, Bryan Burns, was interested in researching the matters more closely. He filed a California Public Records Act request to access some of the documents and emails of superintendent Tim Beard who left the school to take a new job in Costa Rica. What he didn't expect was the chaos that followed.

Under the Records act, the governing body must respond within 10 days of the request. Burns waited two years before he finally got a reply which stated that he would have to pay $3,000 if he wanted the state to process and release the emails.

Because of the delay, Burns was beginning to get suspicious. "I have hunches," he said. "There must be something good in there if they don't want to hand them over."

Is it legal for the general public to access these records?

The California Public Records Act was enacted in 1968 to allow the public to access state and local government records to assess how the organizations were functioning. A new Proposition was passed in 2004, which added these measures to the state's Constitution.

Though the request seems like an isolated incident, failure to provide public records is a common occurrence. The advocacy group, Californians Aware, performed a test to see how deep the problem resonated. They audited 194 schools and out of the lot, 104 received a grade of "F", with most not responding to the requests at all. Out of the 194, 41 districts supplied the requested records, with the Poway Unified School District scoring high marks for sending the records via email within three days.

The district to which Burns was requesting public records finally made a statement last week concerning the matter. Amy Wooliever, as stated in news reports, stressed how much time it would take the town to examine the lot of 23,000 requested documents. She is the only one who could review the requests and she only had two hours a week for that particular job. "I don't want it to come across that we don't want to fulfill a public record request," she said. "It's just a huge request. There's 23,000 documents here that I have to review."

Attorney Terry Francke, co-founder of Californians Aware, after listening to the district's reply, questioned the approach. He did not see how the district would need to examine all 23,000 documents to give the requester the records he desired. "I suspect this request is being made more formidable than necessary," Francke said. "Are these e-mails not electronically word-searchable? If they are, the use of a few judiciously selected keywords related to the construction project should isolate most of the relevant messages."

These public records cases are becoming far too common. States such as New York, Arizona and Florida have already assigned a group of people called ombudsmen to become a sounding board when agencies refuse to hand over public records. In California, currently there is no other method to obtain overdue public records but to file a lawsuit, which can become a very expensive venture.