In May 2012 former Superintendent Dr. Patricia Green told parents to use the Freedom of Information Act to access public records and information. The new Superintendent urges transparency and minimal reliance FOIA for routine requests.
Please note: Bob Rorke is a member of The Ann Arbor independent’s Editorial Board.
IF THERE IS one persistent criticism of the AAPS, it’s that the organization lacks “transparency.”
“Any time you have a Superintendent who tells parents to use the Freedom of Information Act to get information, there’s a big problem,” said the parent of two Clague Middle School students.
The parent is referring to a May 2012 Board of Education meeting at which then Superintendent Dr. Patricia Green suggested that if parents wanted information about the AAPS, parents could get it by using Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
The Michigan Freedom of Information Act is a series of laws designed to guarantee that the public has access to public records of government bodies at all levels in Michigan. The first version of the law was enacted by the state legislature in 1977. The provisions of the law are included in MCL (Michigan Compiled Laws) Sections 15.231 -15.246.
Dr. Green’s comment prompted more than a little blow back, starting with Trustees Simone Lightfoot and Susan Baskett. BOE Trustee Baskett pointed out that FOIAs cost money and are “not equitable to all.”
Baskett went on to say Green’s suggestion seemed “burdensome.”
Trustee Baskett also said that “as taxpayers, parents have the right to that information. I hope we have a better procedure other than FOIA requests, and perhaps that is something we can develop in the future.”
That was 18 months ago, and new Superintendent Dr. Jeanice Kerr Swift has developed a better system: Unless the information or data are “sensitive,” parents are welcome to it; all they have to do is ask.
There have been criticisms that the AAPS uses and abuses the Freedom of Information Act to deter parents and others from gathering information.
Ann Arbor resident Ruth Kraut blogs at A2SchoolsMuse.com. She posted a piece on May 9, 2012 which was a response to then Superintendent Green’s suggestion that FOIA would be the “fairest” way for parents to get information from the AAPS.
Kraut called the idea “obstreperous obstinate and idiotic.”
Ruth Kraut also writes, “I could get my friends to flood the district with FOIA requests. I don’t want to do that. And I’m quite sure the district doesn’t want to have to respond to tons of FOIA requests. That might prove my point, but it’s not particularly helpful. No—what I want is a district that is responsive to parents’ and taxpayers’ requests, with the least drama possible.”
How much drama can there possibly be?
When Bob Rorke served as a member of the AAPS Board of Trustees in the late 90s, he asked that the employment contracts of then Superintendent Rossi Ray-Taylor and her “cabinet” be given to him so he could make them public.
His request was refused and Rorke resorted to a Freedom of Information Act request in order to force AAPS officials to release the public records. He then shared the information with the Ann Arbor News.
In 2011, Ann Arbor Public Schools, under the leadership of interim Superintendent Robert Allen, released class size “averages” to the public.
Persuading District officials to release the actual head count data took 72 days and multiple open records requests. At one point the AAPS FOIA Officer claimed the head count records didn’t exist. A FOIA request for copies of emails sent between AAPS staff turned up one in which two upper-level administrators discuss the head count data that the FOIA Officer claimed did not exist.
This assessment was offered up by a local writer:
“When Pat Green came along and insisted everything be FOIA’d, I did have to FOIA several things—and I also asked some friends to FOIA things as well. I also was charged a couple of times for projects—I think the most expensive project I got charged for was $60. Since Jeanice Swift has come in, I haven’t FOIA’d anything because I don’t like using FOIA….I have some ideas of things I might ask for in the future, and I’m kind of assuming that it will be like the pre-Pat Green era, where they will give me the answers to simple questions but I’ll need to FOIA complex information.”
Dr. Jeanice Kerr Swift speaks passionately about the need for her district to be as open and transparent as possible with parents.
“It’s obscene to force parents to rely on FOIA to get their questions answered. I’ll use that word: obscene.”
Dr. Swift goes on to describe how parent requests for information are handled (or should be):
“Parents start with the teacher, then move to the principal. From there, a parent would move to an administrator and, finally, to me.”
If Dr. Swift doesn’t keep a sign on her desk that says “The Buck Stops Here,” she should.
“I just can’t think of an instance this school year when a parent didn’t get the information they needed,” she said.
She explains why a Freedom of Information Act request would be necessary: “FOIA is for sensitive data, such as a teacher’s personnel file where we want to have that framework so we all have the same expectations concerning what information will be included.”
In other words, the Freedom of Information Act law provides a rubric which outlines the kinds of information requests that may be refused and which kinds of information may be redacted or omitted.
More than once, Dr. Swift mentioned item Number Five (communication) in her recently crafted Strategic Plan.
“I don’t have a magic wand and I don’t like the conspiracy theories. FOIA does not substitute for Strategic Plan item Number Five,” said Swift.
However, as author John Steinbeck wrote in his novella Of Mice and Men, “The best-laid plans of mice and men oft go astray.”
While Dr. Swift intends parents to have access to most public records by simply asking to receive them, the system doesn’t always work that way.
On January 8 The Ann Arbor Independent sent this informal request to the AAPS FOIA Officer:
“…Can you please tell me how many AAPS students were suspended in 2011-2012 and how many of those students were black, how many were white and how many were classified as other?”
On January 14 The Ann Arbor Independent sent this email to the FOIA Officer:
“I would also like to take this opportunity to request copies of the AAPS FOIA logs for the months of May 2012-December 2012….If the logs could be sent as electronic files, that would…be most convenient for my purposes.”
Both informal requests for information went unanswered. Subsequent FOIA requests sent several hours later for the same information were promptly acknowledged. The FOIA Officer, however, requested a 10 day extension on all of the requests, no reason given. A reason is required, however, under the law. When prompted for an explanation, this reply came:
“In all cases is due to the amount of information in all of your requests and the staff time it will take to fulfill the requests.”
We asked Dr. Swift about the informal request sent on January 8 for the student suspension data. She replied: “That data is something we already have. No problem.” When told the January 8 informal request was never acknowledged by staff, Swift said that she wanted to look into why that had happened.
The “spirit of the process is to encourage openness and transparency,” said the superintendent.
With respect to The Indy’s experience using informal requests to get information from the AAPS, the Superintendent’s spirit is willing, but her system is weak.
In the 2011-2012 academic year, the AAPS fielded 73 Freedom of Information Act requests, or just slightly more than one request per week, on average. In a two month period of 2011 a FOIA Log shows that Ann Arbor City Clerk’s office fielded 114 public records requests. That’s two per day, on average. The majority of the records requests submitted to Ann Arbor officials were responded to within five business days.
In order to release the one page FOIA Log, the AAPS FOIA officer asked for a 10 day extension claiming that additional staff time was necessary. An appeal of the requested extension resulted in the single page FOIA Log being released in two days. The Indy will conduct another test of the AAPS before the end of the school year.