To be presented at the 12/20/2022 School Board Meeting
To: Londonderry School Board
From: Dan Black
Date: December 15th, 2022
Re: 1st Reading of Policy KBA Right to Know Procedures
I have prepared an updated Policy KBA for the School Board’s review for December 20th, 2022. Based on the tight turn around, I will not have time for our legal team to review these updates, but we will be able to have their take by the 2nd or 3rd read of this updated policy.
As we prepare for the 1st Reading on December 20th, 2022, I do want to make a few points that hopefully we can discuss in public on that night.
It was said in prior meetings that emailing Right to Know requests will save the District Office time. I do not agree with this statement so I will want to hear more from the School Board on how that is the case. What I am most concerned about is having to work with two of the following groups on Right to Know requests: (1) those that live far away from Londonderry looking to dig up information on us for various reasons (2) citizens that use Right to Know requests to harass and clog up the functions of a District Office.
Right now, our policy as written protects the district’s time and staffing from both of these groups, but this would not be the case if email was always a tool available to complete Right to Know requests. For that reason, I have made the following updates to the policy to achieve the Board’s goal of making email transmission possible, with specific requirements to protect the School District as well.
“In the event, that records exist in electronic format already, and do not need to be redacted for privacy reasons, the Superintendent or their designee can email those records to citizens of Londonderry NH as part of completing the request if possible; otherwise Right to Know requests will be completed in the other manners and processes as described in this policy already.”
The motion from the school board stated from December 13th stated to update the policy as follows, with a few words added for clarity: “Records can be made available by email that are already available in electronic format when completing a Right to Know request.”
I have added additional language that I think is best to navigate the landscape in front of us and what I heard at the last school board meeting from other comments from the school board to hopefully reach consensus moving forward. We can use the December 20th, 2022, meeting to make sure everyone is clear and comfortable with updated language for this policy to then move on whatever updates are made to a 2nd reading.