Yesterday, the
DOE announced changes
to its Freedom of Information
guidelines, stating that from now on, they will attempt to more accurately estimate when they will
provide the documents requested, including
"the approximate date, which must be reasonable under the
circumstances, when the request will be granted or denied."
The current practice is that every month or
so, the DOE’s legal office sends you a boilerplate email saying they are still
looking for the document, but “due to the volume and complexity of requests” it
will take another month “to respond substantively to your request.” Then the next month goes by, and you get the
exact same message again.
I currently have four FOIL requests outstanding for over a
year, including the Renewal school’s class size reduction efforts and funding for
this purpose, technology spending by DOE between 2011 and 2015, the cost of
charter school facility upgrades and leases charter leases and facility
upgrades between FY 2014 and FY 2016, and the names of the private
organizations receiving student personal information and the legal agreements
on how this data will be used and shared.
All these
requests were filed in April 2016 and I am still waiting; nearly a year and a half later, for a substantive
response.
Despite de Blasio’s
campaign promises that he would reform the FOIL process and respond in a more timely fashion, the response time is now worse than ever, and
DOE remains the least transparent city agency in response time according to
this Chalkbeat analysis. (See also the section on Transparency in the KidsPAC report card in which the Mayor got an "F".)
The current
wait times and continual postponements of a substantive response are a violation of law, since they represent a “constructive denial”
according to Robert Freeman of the NY Open Government Committee and other
experts. Whether or not this new
procedure will mean that the DOE will respond any more speedily to FOIL
requests is completely unknown. I remain skeptical. The new
policy was instituted as a result of a lawsuit by the NY Post, so perhaps if
the DOE doesn’t shape up their act, they will have to go back to court.
When I was on
vacation in the middle of August, I did receive a substantive response to one of my
FOILs – this time one I filed to the Mayor’s office. On April 10, 2016, I asked for the decision memo from the
Mayor's office about their decision to accept or reject
the thirteen recommendations of the Blue Book Working group . This
working group, appointed by the Chancellor and co-chaired by Lorraine Grillo,
the head of the School Construction Authority, had recommended in December 2014
that the DOE align the school capacity formula to the smaller class sizes in
their original Contract for Excellence class size reduction plan
The City sat on these recommendations for more than six months, and finally in July 2015, in the middle of summer, announced that
they would accept seven of the 13 but reject six others, including what many members said was the most important one: to align the capacity formula with smaller class sizes. There were several articles about this rejection, including in
Chalkbeat and
WNYC Schoolbook ,
DNAinfo, and
on my blog here and
here.
The
city’s decision not to align the school capacity formula is also an important factor cited
in our
class size complaint to the state, filed in July; (see p.
13 of the complaint) , providing yet more evidence of the city’s violation of
the Contract for Excellence law, which requires NYC to lower class size and to
align its school construction plan with its class size reduction plan. To this
day, no one from City Hall has explained their reasons for rejection this
proposal
-- though members of the Working
Group have repeatedly asked for them to do so.
The
final decision memo from the Mayor’s office that I finally received in August
is dated May 28, 2015, and is almost entirely blacked out. The only info that is legible pertains to
which recommendations they accepted, with all the explanations for the basis
for their decisions redacted. They even blacked
out any mention of the six recommendations they rejected.
The other interesting aspect of the decision memo is how it was signed off on by
many high- level staff -- including the Deputy Mayor, the Corporation Counsel,
the Chief of Staff, Emma Wolfe, and Dean Fulehain, head of OMB, but no one from
the DOE or SCA, which is peculiar given how the issue pertains to the way
school capacity will be measured.
Documents
exempted from release include:
(g) are inter-agency or
intra-agency materials which are not:
i. statistical or
factual tabulations or data;
ii. instructions to staff that affect the public;
iii. final agency
policy or determinations;
Yet
though this decision memo does pertain to intra-agency communications, it is
also a "final agency policy or determination."
It also presumably cited facts to explain and
rationalize the decisions made. If there were
no facts cited to explain the decisions made, this would even be worse. Below is my appeal letter to the state, making these points with relevant evidence from previous court decisions and asking them to provide a cleaner copy.
_________________________
Henry
Berger, Records Appeals Office
RE: ID
#2016-002-00063
Dear Mr. Berger:
I am appealing the decision to redact nearly the entire City
Hall decision memo dated May 28, 2015, that approved or rejected certain proposals
on reforming the school capacity formula; this letter is attached.
The FOIL
determination letter that I received along with the memo stated that the
redactions were made because of exceptions listed under Public Officers Law
Section 87(2)(g):
Documents
exempted from release include:
(g) are inter-agency or
intra-agency materials which are not:
i. statistical or
factual tabulations or data;
ii. instructions to staff that affect the public;
iii. final agency
policy or determinations…
Yet
though this decision memo does include intra-agency communications, it is also
a "final agency policy or determination." It also presumably included at least some facts
to explain and rationalize the determinations made, which should not have been
redacted.
See
also these relevant legal cases,
granting access to such documents, from the Committee on Open Government
website:
New York Times Co. v. City of New York Fire Dep't, 4 N.Y.3d 477, 796
N.Y.S.2d 302 (2005) (held, dispatch calls made over Fire Department's internal
communications system concerning response to September 11 terrorist attacks are disclosable "to the extent they
consist of factual statements or instructions affecting the public"),,,,
Miller v. Hewlett-Woodmere Union Free School District, N.Y.L.J., May 16, 1990
(Sup. Ct., Nassau County, 1990) (granting access to records of final decision denying request to change
schools); Rold v. Coughlin, 142 Misc.2d 877, 538 N.Y.S.2d 896,
(Sup. Ct. 1989) (granting access to inmate health care records as factual data and final agency
determinations);
I urge you to reconsider and remove these redactions that related
to these determinations as:
1- this is a final decision memo; and 2- presumably the
explanations contained at least some facts.
This appeal is filed within 23 business days from the day I
received the redacted memo.
Yours,
Leonie
Haimson
Executive
Director
Class Size
Matters
