Mark Crockett is no stranger to public records. The teacher at Western Albemarle High School has used salary information to compare pay raises for the district’s administrators and teachers and has sifted documents to challenge a consultant who concluded teachers didn’t value an early retirement incentive program. But as the state celebrated government transparency with Sunshine Week March 15-21, Crockett learned Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act doesn’t free all information equally.
Crocket wanted to read anonymous comments from a survey conducted last fall by the Albemarle County Public Schools’ Quality Council in order to assess attitudes about school leadership. Numeric results were released in February, but Crockett wanted a closer look at the comments.
“I don’t want to diminish any person in any way, but what I hear from other people is that there is a leadership problem, and I want to know if there is.”
What better way than to read employees’ anonymous comments?
“If comments suggest there are problems at the division level,” Crockett continues, “I would take it to the School Board and say, ‘You need to address these.’ The very fact that a problem’s open means it has to get resolved.”
Crockett first asked Albemarle School Board Chairman Brian Wheeler for the compiled comments. Wheeler remembers the request. He told Crockett the information hadn’t been presented to the board yet, but he was free to request it from staff. Moreover, Superintendent Pamela Moran, rather than the Board, had commissioned the survey, so the Board wouldn’t be responsible for releasing documents anyway.
Crockett asked the superintendent, as well as the head of the Quality Council, but his initial inquiries were rebuffed. He then filed the FOIA request, but the district had concluded survey comments belonged to the superintendent’s “working papers,” which exempts them from FOIA.
“We’re not trying to obfuscate or deny his request,” says Maury Brown, spokesperson for county schools. “FOIA is a large law, one we do absolutely comply with.”
Stymied, Crockett contemplated legal action when at last the district relented—partially. A hand-delivered letter from Senior Assistant County Attorney Annie Kim reached Crockett on March 13. It explained that the superintendent’s office continued to consider the comments “working papers” but would release them once the final report was approved by the Quality Council and superintendent, likely by the end of the school year.
Yet two conditions applied. Since the district deemed comments about particular people “personnel records,” all names or specific job titles would be expunged. Second, if Crockett wanted the redacted information sooner, he’d have to pay the cost of preparing it.
Crockett disagrees that all names should be concealed; he considers most principals and their bosses public officials. He also wonders who will do the redacting and what the guidelines for redaction are. Having the district edit comments is like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse: If the comments indicated leadership is a problem, why trust the leaders to expose that problem?
But for now, Crockett says, if something will appear eventually, he can wait rather than foot the bill. “I have other things to keep me busy.”
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