The City School District of New Rochelle formally responded to my FOIL requests from last week.
Dear Mr. Cox,
This letter will acknowledge receipt of your (8) eight separate Freedom of Information Law requests, all dated October 28, 2008, which were received in my office on October 29, 2008.
Except to the extent that any request has been denied below, we expect to be able to furnish all of the requested records within twenty business days of the date of this letter. When they are available for delivery, I will advise you of any copying or other preparation charges in advance.
Not surprisingly, they continue to play their usual games. Even though they granted seven of my eight document requests they have failed to deliver a single one, even when the documents are readily available. They have also falsely claimed they cannot deliver paper documents unless I pay the cost of photocopying them upfront and gave themselves an extra five days to comply with the law. Likewise, if this is what they are attempting to do, there is no justification in the law for bundling my individual requests and then not providing any of the documents on the grounds that they cannot provide all of them at once.
The law is very specific on what the District must do upon receipt of a FOIL request:
The District must, within five business days of the receipt of a written request for a record reasonably described, make such record available to the person requesting it, deny such request in writing or furnish a written acknowledgment of the receipt of such request and a statement of the approximate date, which shall be reasonable under the circumstances of the request, when such request will be granted or denied.
In my case, the district today acknowledged receipt of 8 separate requests. They have granted seven of the eight document requests in whole yet failed to turn over a single document.
The law also states:
If an agency determines to grant a request in whole or in part, and if circumstances prevent disclosure to the person requesting the record or records within twenty business days from the date of the acknowledgement of the receipt of the request, the agency shall state, in writing, both the reason for the inability to grant the request within twenty business days and a date certain within a reasonable period, depending on the circumstances, when the request will be granted in whole or in part.
What circumstance prevent the District from turning over documents that are readily available to them? None. In a couple of instances they might have a legitimate claim but for almost all of them they offer no good reason not to have turned over the documents in five days as required by law.
The law also references a twenty day window but they attempt to twist that into a new meaning to suit their purpose. They have already acknowledged receipt of the request on October 29th in their reply dated November 5th then claim they have until twenty business days from the date of their reply to deliver the documents to me. The law states that the clock starts ticking on the twenty day window upon receipt of my request.
They also try to claim that they are not turning over paper documents because I did not pay the cost of photocopying them. That is not what the law says.
Upon payment of, or offer to pay, the fee prescribed therefor, the entity shall provide a copy of such record…
Except for the budget document (they claim 5 of the pages are only available as hard copy), they received my offer to pay all fees to photocopy documents in my original requests.
This is not complicated. Under the law, the district is required to turn over all documents within five days. There are exceptions based on a reasonableness standard but the district has not met this standard nor even bothered to explain why, for instance, they cannot email me a Microsoft Word document they admit they have when they were able to email me their FOIL reply in Microsoft Word.
Here is a breakdown of their reply of each request and why their reply violated FOIL.
Request No. 1 (“City School District of New Rochelle Street Directory”)
They admit they have it, they say they have it in paper form, they agree I am entitled to it, they have my offer to pay the cost of making photocopies of it but they have not sent it and have not provided any explanation of why they have not sent it and we are now past the required five business days time limit.
Request No. 2 (“‘Going Green’ PowerPoint document presented by Christine Coleman to the Board of Education on October 7, 2008”)
They admit they have it, they say they have it in electronic format, the agree I am entitled to it, they have it in Microsoft Powerpoint format as I requested but have not sent it and have not provided any explanation of why they have not sent it and we are now past the required five business days time limit.
Request No. 3 (“new Health Services Department Manual”)
They admit they have it, they say they have it in electronic format, the agree I am entitled to it, but they claim it is not in Microsoft Word format so they must convert the file to Microsoft Word and therefore have not sent it. They provide no information as to what format the document is in or why converting the file to Microsoft Word prevents them from providing the document within the required five business days and we are now past that five business days time limit.
Request No. 4 (student transportation data)
I made two requests on this topic: documents and access to computer systems used to calculate distances. They have denied access to the computer system. As for the documents, they admit they have them, the say they have them in electronic format, the agree I am entitled to it, but they claim it is not in Microsoft Word format so they must convert the file to Microsoft Word. They provide no information as to what format the document is in or why converting the file to Microsoft Word prevents them from providing the document within the required five business days and we are now past that five business days time limit.
Some of the documents are in paper form. These documents they admit they have, they say they have it in paper form, they agree I am entitled to it, they have my offer to pay the cost of making photocopies of it but they have not sent it and have not provided any explanation of why they have not sent it and we are now past the required five business days time limit.
Request No. 5 (“the District’s policy regarding new admissions to the District for children from the Lincoln School District”)
They have it, they have it in electronic format, the agree I am entitled to it, they have in Microsoft Word format but have not sent it and have provided no explanation of why they have not sent it within the required five business days.
Request No. 6 (“the City School District of New Rochelle Code of Conduct and the Summary version sent to parents”).
They have it, they have it in electronic format, the agree I am entitled to it, they have in Microsoft Word format but have not sent it and have provided no explanation of why they have not sent it within the required five business days.
Request No. 7 (“the City School District of New Rochelle FINAL Budget for the 2008-2009 school year”).
They have it, they have almost all of it in electronic format, the agree I am entitled to it, they have in Microsoft Excel format but have not sent it and have provided no explanation of why they have not sent it within the required five business days.
They say “Five pages within the document are available in hard-copy format only”. I did not offer to pay the cost of making photocopies because, as far as I could see, the document should be entirely in electronic format. It is not clear how these five documents came to exist in the bound copies distributed by the District. Regardless, I will offer to pay the photocopying charges for the 5 pages if there claim turns out to be true.
Request No. 8 (electronic mail).
They have denied this request on the grounds that the records are “inter-agency or intra-agency materials”. I will leave that issue to the folks who conduct the criminal investigation as they can subpoena these sorts of records.
