Oley Valley School Board Winks at Right to Know Law

The Oley Valley School District is continuing its plan to prevent the public from participating in the educational process.
Despite the Reading Eagle editorials and the taxpayers carrying signs packing board meetings supporting Free Speech, the school board recently approved a policy to restrict public comment at the regular board meetings.
Speakers are now limited to three minutes, topics to thirty minutes, and statements can be cut off for any reason by the presiding officer.
The anti-public strategy of the school board continues because the Policy Committee, headed by Robert Cappa plans to make access to Public Records prohibitive.
The current fee schedule for copies of Public Records is ten cents per copy. The district wants to charge twenty five cents a copy and an hourly retrieval rate.
A Public Record is already on file with the district in a format of their convenience.

The Pennsylvania Right to Know Law says;

Amending the act of June 21, 1957 (P.L. 390, No. 212), entitled An act requiring certain records of the Commonwealth and its political subdivisions and of certain authorities and other agencies performing essential governmental functions, to be open for examination and inspection by citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; authorizing such citizens under certain conditions to make extracts, copies, photographs or photostats of such records; and providing for appeals to the courts of common pleas, further providing for definitions, for examination and inspection and for extracts, copies or photostats; providing for denial of access to public records, for redaction, for response to requests for access and for final agency determinations; further providing for appeal from denial of right; and providing for court costs and attorney fees, for penalty and for immunity.

The political subdivision, in this case the school district may charge “reasonable” copying fees. It can also charge for requests of information put in a format that is different from district in-file records.
But charging an hourly rate for information that should be in the district possession and taxes have already been incurred to create and store that paperwork, appears to be an attempt by the board to skirt the Right to Know Law of Pennsylvania.
At the September 13, 2006 combined board meeting, the citizens discovered the plot to charge exorbitant fees for Public Records.
Dr. Zackon was asked if they planned to charge an hourly rate, he said “No”. But at the September 20, 2006 meeting, he recants by saying “..He does not know” if they plan to charge for labor.
Over $6,000,000 in off-budget funds while the board raises taxes, the school budget, the monthly Treasurer Report depicting activities in these off-budget funds, the teachers’ contract, the Superintendent’s contract, the little known Medical Pool Fund, are just a few the topics the board does not like to discuss with the taxpayers.
These and other areas of interest will not be available because the board plans to make them too expensive for review.
The community has every right to see their Public Records and not to be gouged in the process.
The next Policy Meeting is Monday, October 9, 2006, at 7:00PM in the Administration Building Boardroom.