Beth Ann Rosica: Why do school districts spend so much money fighting Right to Know requests?
The extended school closures starting in 2020 mobilized parents in a way never seen before. Angry and without answers to questions, many started filing Right to Know (RTK) requests with their school district to figure out what was actually happening. Fast forward to today, and many of these parents are still seeking answers to questions about what is occurring in their children’s classrooms.
In Pennsylvania, we are fortunate to have a robust RTK law and a process to appeal through the Office of Open Records (OOR) when we believe the agency did not fulfill the request adequately. Under the law, all agency records are presumed to be public and the burden is on the agency to prove the records are exempt from disclosure. This is significant because it means school districts have the burden to show why requested records are exempt from the law as opposed to parents having the burden to demonstrate why they are entitled to the records.
The RTK law was enacted to “empower citizens by affording them access to information concerning the activities of their government…[and to] prohibit secrets, scrutinize actions of public officials, and make officials accountable for their actions.” Uniontown Newspapers, Inc. v. Pa Dep’t of Corr., 243 A.3d 19, 33 (Pa. 2020).
But despite the law, many Pennsylvania public schools abuse their authority and hide information that should be disclosed to parents and citizens who seek it. Many districts use taxpayer dollars to fight parents, making the process as expensive and time-consuming as possible, so that many parents simply give up.
Expensive legal reviews of RTK requests should be rare, but they are more often than not the standard practice for districts, many of whom engage large and expensive law firms, like Fox Rothschild. Ultimately, these records belong to the taxpayers, and districts could save hundreds of thousands of dollars per year by skipping the legal review and simply fulfilling the RTK requests.
Examples across the region abound, but here are two school districts who spent excessive amounts of taxpayer dollars to fight parents on RTK requests.
A few years ago, I filed RTK requests with several Chester County school districts about a field trip to the People’s Light Theater. Most of the districts provided some of the information I requested, but Coatesville Area School District denied the request. As a result, I filed an appeal with OOR, and it ruled to grant access to some of the requested documents on March 31, 2023.
But that is not the end of the story. Coatesville apparently did not want to give me the emails I requested about the field trip, so their attorney filed a petition in court on May 1, 2023, for a judicial review. We had a hearing in October 2023 where I had to represent myself, and then over a year later in December 2024, Chester County Judge Binder ruled against me.
Throughout this process, Coatesville School District spent almost $25,000 in legal fees to fight me. They used taxpayer dollars to prevent me from obtaining emails about a field trip! I considered filing an appeal in court but did not think I could do that on my own, and an attorney quoted me $10,000 to take the case. Since I do not have unlimited taxpayer money to pay attorneys, I had to let it go.
I still think it is disgraceful that Coatesville School District spent so much money from taxpayers to fight such a simple request. It makes you wonder what they were really hiding.
Other school districts also spend large sums of taxpayer dollars fighting RTK requests. Chad Williams, a parent in the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District, experienced similar situations.
“I have spent more than three years, hundreds of hours of personal time, and thousands of dollars of my own money, simply trying to obtain transparency and accountability. I am seeking public records that will shed light on why the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District ignored my legitimate concerns during Covid as to why district officials were enforcing unlawful polices, against my will, that were causing harm to my children. Then, when I later sought the assistance of Senator Scott Martin (who was the chair of the Senate Education Committee at the time), the District withheld those records from him and submitted an demonstrably false affidavit in an official proceeding before Pennsylvania Office of Open Records.
“Later, I found out that teachers were pushing Marxist ideologies in the classroom and violating federal family privacy laws by asking my children highly sensitive questions through surveys that were administered without my notice or consent. I sought records about those matters as well. District officials have refused to meet with me to discuss my concerns, and have spent literally tens of thousands of dollars with Fox Rothschild, the school district solicitor, to hide that information from me.
“The Unionville-Chadds Ford School District is abusing the RTKL process and spending tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars with a massive, thousand-lawyer law firm to keep parents and citizens in the dark, and to protect the superintendent and school district solicitor from accountability for documented misconduct and violations of law. It isn’t right, and the General Assembly needs to do something about it.”
Williams appealed to the Chester County Court of Common Pleas, but Judge Nicole Forzato denied his access to discovery regarding the district’s conduct. He is now represented by the Pacific Justice Institute in complaints pending before the United States Department of Education.
The RTK law was designed to give citizens and parents the right to access public information, yet many school districts with their seemingly unlimited resources fight parents on very basic requests. The districts hope that parents will not spend their own money to hire an attorney to fight on their behalf. The average parent does not have the time, energy or resources to engage in a protracted legal battle with a school district.
And yet, school districts regularly complain about lack of funding for education initiatives. If they eliminated legal reviews on RTK requests, districts could have significant amounts of money every year that could be used to hire more teachers or reading specialists.
Ultimately, the legal reviews raise the question: what are the districts hiding and why are they spending so much money to keep it that way?
Beth Ann Rosica resides in West Chester, has a Ph.D. in Education, and has dedicated her career to advocating on behalf of at-risk children and families. She covers education issues for Broad + Liberty. Contact her at barosica@broadandliberty.com.
Maybe they simply disagreed with the law and planned on lawlessly ignoring court orders if they came. Apparently that’s ok for the president to do so why not school districts?
Actually that is more of a democrat tactic as evidenced and touted by the Democrat Bucks County commissioners defying and ignoring the state supreme court regarding the US Senate vote recount. The president (YOUR president) did not ignore a court order since the flight of criminal deportees was outside of US territory and jurisdiction at the time of the bogus court order. Makes one wonder: What is Coatesville hiding that would cause them to hide public funded school business e-mails? This type of overreach by taxpayer funded institutions is exactly why the DOE was just eliminated by our (AND YOUR) President.
Well said!
And wow. “I found out that teachers were pushing Marxist ideologies” Good lord this absurd red scare rhetoric, which obviously the author takes unquestioningly at face value to be true, was already getting old during the McCarthy era. Why doesn’t the right ever tell us what exactly is “Marxist” about anything they’re teaching? AND they were “violating federal family privacy laws by asking my children highly sensitive questions through surveys”. Yikes. Are they aware of the questions Republicans want to ask kids about their private parts in the name of catching transgender athletes? What about the creepy, warrantless surveillance of minors used to make sure they’re forced to carry a baby to term even if it’s the result of incest or r@pe or could kill the 12 year old mother?
Teachers supporting sometimes violent protests on college (mostly liberal ivy league) campuses, open support for terrorist organizations on campus, 1619 Project instruction, gay pornographic literature in grade school libraries, gender affirmation discussions with students absent of their parents being informed of or included in this, threatening parents who dissent at school board meetings along with shutting down the schools during Covid and with teacher strikes – all Marxist Communist in nature. Bourgeois vs. proletariat. I’m guessing that your surveillance comment stems from that idiot Tim Walz’s false statements on project 2025 while he was campaigning (or was he staring down Chinese tanks in Tiananmen Square?) Even left-leaning Factcheck found it to be false and a lie.
The same thing happened to me with the WCASD. I requested information about the number of students in the WCASD that have left the district in the last 10 years, what schools they attended instead, and whether or not they returned to the district during that time. I appealed and the Office of Open Records agreed that they should proved that information, and the district took steps to sue me. I, like you, do not have the monetary resources to enjoin that battle, so I dropped the issue. What do they have to hide?
Coatesville at least sued in the court system when defying an OOR order. The OOR granted a documents appeal to me about a year ago and my township was ordered by OOR to produce the record. Willistown township did not file suit; they simply ignored the OOR order and did not provide the records in 30 days as ordered. They did not even write me to state they were defying the order and why. They simply put the burden on the citizen to file suit against the township knowing full well citizens generally cannot or will not spend their own money to sue the township, especially considering that the party initiating a lawsuit might be ordered to pay the other party’s legal fees if the other side prevailed. When I approached OOR about the order being ignored, asking that they enforce the order, they stated that they cannot legally enforce their own orders. I was flabbergasted. A lot of taxpayer money is being wasted in OOR because their power against governmental agencies willing to break the law is quite low.
The Legislature in PA passes a lot of laws pertaining to local government but they do not provide for enforcement mechanisms to empower citizens seeking accountability. I have not encountered many situations in my life where the playing field is so leveled in favor of government agencies breaking the law.
Make your schoolboard members aware, and if you don’t get traction, encourage parents to vote them out.
Easier said than done, but friends, school organizations, websites, board meetings, local news editorials, social media, etc. can help get the word out.
Question state representatives with the lack of transparency an what they intend to do about it.
“It [Coatesville] makes you wonder…” That’s farther than most people go.
I’m wordsmithing wonder and wander and further and farther. I think they’re interchangeable in this context.
That’s the state of Pennsylvania for ya, so much corruption, and secret society groups who are more focused on protecting their and those members of the groups images. Our tax dollars funds these institutions and agencies who do not genuinely work for the people, hello ‘public records’ which means free to citizens of the United States of America who pays these your salaries, and legal representation but we have to foot our own litigation bill, and given the runaround. Oh, and please do not depend on these so-called public interest firms who claims to represent the public, huh, more like representing the districts, fakes, frauds, and phonies.