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XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Sun, May 15, 2011 at 8:13 PM

To: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXCc:XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Bev -

I'm writing as a followup to our conversation after the budget meetinglast Wednesday.

You'll recall that we were discussing the Pittsburgh Tribune Review'srequest of September 8, 2009, for financial data from Fort Cherry -in particular, 2005-2010 payroll/salary information, and 2005-2010line item revenue and expenditures, including all checks written. Youseemed upset that the request had been made, and indicated that thisinformation request, which as far as I know is still unmet, has costthe school a lot of money already. I recall you said $20,000.

I suggested to you that the Trib probably wouldn't have made thisrequest if the school was more transparent. Based on my own

experiences attending school board meetings, reviewing school boardminutes, and requesting public documents from the business office, Ihave wondered if the school is working mindfully to discourage publicoversight and involvement.

In any case, I told you that it has been proven that Fort Cherry canprovide four of the five requested years as computer files, which youappeared to think was impossible. I will explain in this email why Isaid this.

A little essential background information: the Fort Cherry OpenRecords Officer, Paul Sroka, agreed that the school could provide allthe data requested at an estimated cost of $5,000 to coverapproximately 20,000 printed pages at .25 per page. He indicatedthese pages would be manually redacted to protect confidentialinformation. The Trib asked why the data, which is kept on acomputer, couldn't be redacted on the computer and supplied ascomputer files, such as PDFs, text files, or Excel spreadsheets. Mr.Sroka asserted that he would have to create a document in a file orformat in which it does not currently exist, something the law doesn'trequire him to do.

To make a long story short, on November 30, 2009, the district allowedthe Trib's certified computer examiner, W. Scott Ardisson of bit-x-bitLLC, to visit the school, where Mr. Ardisson demonstrated that therequested information could in fact be supplied as redacted computerfiles for the school years 2006-2010.

On December 31, 2009, the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records (OOR)issued a final determination instructing the district to provide the2006-2010 data as computer files (see attached file 2009-0926 Acton -Fort Cherry SD CLOSED[1].pdf, from the Pennsylvania Office of OpenRecords Final Determinations - Appealed page).

In the determination the OOR stated that the downloading of recordsonto an electronic medium and utilizing functionality of the computerprograms available...does not constitute creation of a record. In

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other words, it sounds to me like they completely disagreed with Mr.Sroka's original contention.

Despite the OOR's judgment, the school chose to file an appeal withthe Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania. Attached please find a courtdocket I located last week for this case (FC appeal.pdf, from thePennsylvania's Unified Judical Web Portal Commonwealth Courts docket

search). It looks like this case is moving forward.

If so, why?

I doubt that the school administration believes Mr. Sroka will bedeluged with requests for records in computer files if this isn'tfought. Should I believe that our business manager finds modifying acolumn with several key strokes in Excel more difficult then using amagic marker to black out parts of thousands of printed pages offinancial information? If I thought this were true, which I do not,I'd be very concerned that Mr. Sroka isn't qualified to do his job.

This leads me to think the school has something to hide, the same

thought I imagine caused the Trib to request the data in the firstplace. If this is incorrect, then I assume the school will stopwasting tax payer money in these harsh economic times, and provide theTrib with the requested data.

Sincerely,

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