The BHPSNJ OPRA Troubles

The District is Adding One More Layer Between Families and Important Information…..

Recently I sent an email to the BOE, Superintendent, and Business Administrator with BHCW’s share of OPRA requests. Parents can understand that OPRA is one of the remaining avenues we have left to get information as the BOE majority continues to hide its work in committees away from the public eye, does not engage in discussions with the public, and created a policy to prevent itself from discussing issues publicly. The Superintendent has shut down almost every avenue of feedback during her short 3 year tenure.

In a disturbing advancement of this overall strategy, the District appears to be deliberately delaying OPRA requests while simultaneously trying to vilify this critical right to information during meetings with spin and staged conversations.

After you read the email and the attachments, you will find that the District could resolve over half of its OPRA burden by making documents such as OPRA requests, committee minutes, Community correspondence to the BOE, and contracts publicly available. Two of these items had been historically shared with the public until they became evidence that contradicted the Superintendent’s narratives.

You will find that of the 18 or so requests submitted, only six have been granted, and five or six-week extensions are the norm.

You will find that the BOE, Superintendent, and Business Administrator have yet to answer my question (asked multiple times) as to whether they were directed to break the law and deliberately slow down OPRA requests. That may be why the Business Administrator (an attorney) no longer wants the responsibility – having your name show up on lawsuits against the District hasn’t been a good look – especially when the District keeps losing.

Instead of a functioning BOE capable of adult conversations where reasonable disagreements lead to compromises – we have a cult majority that uses chaos and division to fight against any movement toward transparency, improved student proficiency while cynically injecting ideology into its narrative to influence families to work against their own interests.

The community can elect two new BOE members this year to create a more cohesive, normative body that will not assist the Superintendent in dividing the BOE or community and instead fulfill their obligation to families and students of the District.

Email to the BOE:

I did a review of the OPRA requests BHCW submitted and the responses we received from the District since 1/1. 

With Regard to OPRA requests Submitted by BHCW since 1/1

1 request was for a log tracking use of legal council which conveniently does not exist - so no work on that one.  If it did exist, that is something that could just be posted on the website.

1 request was for the curriculum committee report Ms. Stanley said would be completed by Tuesday (did you get that report yet Dipti?).  If it exists, that can also be posted on the website removing the need for one of these OPRA Requests. Can one of you PLEASE send me a copy of the report the curriculum committee Ms. Stanley indicated would be completed on Tuesday explaining Dr. Varleys reasoning on how COVID and AP Students who don't care (according to the superintendent) as being the factors behind our declines and how a reduction in the math numbers in CMS means they are doing well?

5 Requests were for Committee Minutes and Board Correspondence that can also be posted on the website removing the need for one of these OPRA Requests.

5 requests were for email communication which shouldn't require any redaction at all unless you needed to look for that one obscure case in 16th century Spain that is tangentially related (at best) to a reason why you can type up three pages denying the request or explaining redactions.  Unless of course they involve student names - you can put those babies in neon and fire up the Twitter machine.

1 request wasn't really an OPRA request -Many of the youtube videos of BOE Meetings where many of the ethics violations many of you committed are located inconveniently and poorly labeled- this was a contingent request that did not need to be fulfilled as we were directed to the correct location with the poorly labeled videos.

1 Request was for Admin Contracts that can also be posted on the website removing the need for one of these OPRA Requests.

1 Request was for a copy of OPRA requests submitted to the District that can also be posted on the website removing the need for one of these OPRA Requests.

1 Request was for headers that was abandoned

11 of the 16 above requests would not be needed if the District simply put the information on their website or labeled things correctly.

With regard to responses from the District to our Requests (which do not necessarily correspond to the above as a couple of these were from requests made before 1/1):

6.5 Requests were actually granted
There were 5 extensions
2.5 were not granted
The District requested that we reduce the scope of one request which we did (that probably counted as two requests in your tallies)
1 Request cost five million dollars according to the District and was abandoned.

I went through my email  quickly so there may be human errors - if there are, feel free to let me know by posting all the OPRA requests and FULL responses to those requests on the website.

As I said, if you really want to reduce OPRA requests, get rid of subcommittees and increase meetings to where they were and fill the agenda with real items instead of the nonsense that usually ends up on there (like  policy changes that often make no sense, questions that attempt to make certain BOE Members look bad but backfire badly etc)

Put minutes and board correspondence on the website.

Keep a log of legal expenses that is clear and available to send upon request.

Communicate with each other on school business publicly instead of email.

So, to answer your question (again) Ms. Bradford, this is what you can do to reduce OPRA requests.  There are other suggestions but I want to go little by little here because I feel I keep repeating myself.

Now a question that I've asked several times and none of you have answered. I would really appreciate an answer from each of you individually (this includes you Ms. Kot and Dr. Varley):

Have any of you been directed to delay responses to OPRA requests or have you observed anyone else on this email be told that the District should and/or will deliberately delay OPRA requests?

BHCW OPRA Requests:

District Responses to BHCW OPRA Requests

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