Exclusive: Documents Show NYC’s Education Department Failed to Answer 526 Public Records Requests Over Past 3 Years
In early December 2014, Susan Edelman, a reporter for the New York Post, submitted a public records request to the city’s Department of Education. Edelman requested all email communications from December 30, 2013, between Chancellor Carmen Farina and two others, Michael Mulgrew and Diane Ravitch. The request seemed to reflect concerns from critics, including the Post, who believed that the teachers union had too much influence on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s education policies.
The emails between Farina and Mulgrew, the union president, could potentially support these claims. Ravitch, an education progressive who strongly opposes test-based accountability and charter schools, was involved in the mayor’s inauguration and publicly defended his education agenda. She also served as an informal advisor on school issues.
The contents of these emails, if they even exist, are unknown. According to the Freedom of Information Law in New York, government agencies are required to provide or deny records within 25 days and must specify a date for their response if more time is needed. However, as of October 4th, 715 business days later, Edelman’s request has not been denied or granted. This information comes from a spreadsheet that lists all unfulfilled Freedom of Information requests in the Department of Education.
In April 2016, (an education news outlet) submitted a request for arbitrators’ decisions in teacher misconduct cases that has also gone unfulfilled for 369 business days. published an article in August 2017 highlighting these delays and the Department of Education’s poor response record under the Freedom of Information Law.
Various advocacy groups and media outlets, including the New York Post on behalf of Edelman and her colleagues, have filed lawsuits against the department due to its failure to provide records within a "reasonable period" as mandated by the state. Instead, the department routinely sends monthly notices extending the expected response time by 20 business days. The head of the state’s Committee on Open Government, which oversees the Freedom of Information Law, has criticized the department’s practices.
DOE General Counsel Howard Friedman has acknowledged the need for improvements and has proposed changes to the department’s regulations regarding the Freedom of Information Law. The department is committed to complying with state law and aims to enhance communication with individuals who submit requests by providing realistic response timelines.
From March 2, 2014, the date of the oldest open request, to August 25, 2017, the Department of Education has had 526 outstanding requests, with 221 of them being filed prior to 2017. Among these requests, the group Young Advocates for Fair Education, which advocates for increased secular education in ultra-Orthodox schools, has filed the most with 11 outstanding requests.
In addition to advocacy groups, law firms and media outlets have also filed requests. The New York Post, Chalkbeat, The New York Times, and Politico have all submitted multiple requests, with Edelman and her colleagues at the New York Post having the most at 14.
Reporters have made straightforward requests to the New York City Department of Education (DOE) which have gone unfulfilled for years, despite their careful wording. For example, Eliza Shapiro from Politico asked for Chancellor Fariña’s schedule for the preceding months and Pei-Sze Cheng from WNBC-TV requested information on corporal punishment cases reported to investigators. Similarly, Katie Honan from DNAinfo wanted to know the number of mental health professionals assigned to Renewal Schools, and Carl Campanile from The Post asked for reports on test or grade tampering. The DOE has failed to respond to these requests for a total of 2,235 business days. In response to criticism, the DOE has introduced new guidelines that allow changes to unclear or broad requests. The changes align more with state law, according to Robert Freeman from the Committee on Open Government. There are still outstanding requests from previous years, and it is uncertain if all open requests were provided to . One requester, Aaron Pallas, filed a request in 2011 and never received a response, only monthly extension notices. When he wrote about the delay in an article, he was contacted off the record by the DOE, who told him that his request would not yield the expected results. The last communication he received was an extension letter in 2013. Freeman remains hopeful that the recent changes will improve the DOE’s response to Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests and reduce unreasonable delays. In 2013, then-Public Advocate Bill de Blasio suggested fining agencies that fail to comply with FOIL.
