Deja-vu All Over Again

Mar 4, 20231 Comment

More information comes out about the OPRA Custodian Vote…And it is More of the Same

-Natasha Joly

It was about the same time last year that the decision to eliminate French was announced without any analysis to support the decision. Ultimately, the decision was reversed after parent and student pushback with supporting metrics and information.

At the February 9th BOE meeting, Mr. Hopkins was approved as the record custodian for a cost of 12k for 6 months. There was no analysis provided to support this cost i.e. number of projected unique OPRA requests, the average time to complete a request, and current legal fees related to OPRA requests. Ms. Bradford made a point to say that she received information that informed her decision to approve Mr. Hopkins. After meeting with Ms. Bradford, I learned that she did not have a detailed analysis though Ms. Bradford feels she made an informed decision. She was effectively given a choice to vote for Mr. Hopkins at $12k or attorneys costing $200k. It was the ONLY choice presented to her – packaged with misleading information. Given her understanding at the time, one can understand her vote.

But let’s take a closer look at the $200k. At $165/hour, $200k translates to 1,212 hours. Assuming a 5 day work week for 6 months or 120 days, the attorney estimate translates into over 10hrs per day spent OPRA requests. If accurate, does this mean Mr. Hopkins needs to find an extra 10 hrs/day to deal with OPRA requests? Remember Mr. Hopkins is the Director of Special Projects (including DEI), District Supervisor of 6-12 Social Studies, and 1-12 World Languages. Or were the legal fees inflated to scare the board into approving Mr. Hopkins? This could all so easily be answered by providing the detail behind the $12k and the $200k cost estimates.

Another puzzling question is, why Mr. Hopkins? Putting conflict of interest aside, why is he the most qualified vs, let’s say, any of the other supervisors? When I asked Ms. Bradford what qualifications the records custodian needed, the response was “college degree and some other education.” So is Mr. Hopkins so unique in meeting these requirements that no one else could do the job?

Finally, and the most baffling question is, where is this onslaught of OPRA requests to justify another position? Based on the published OPRA requests, there were 11 unique requests in November, 7 unique requests in December, 5 unique requests in January, 5 total requests in February.

One of the requests in February was for Board Correspondence – emails sent to the BOE from the community. If you recall, they used to be read out loud by the BOE president (i.e. no redaction). Then, a list was published as part of the agenda, including the sender and subject. And today, Ms. Kot reads the list, ascribing her own one-line summary of the content. Publishing the board correspondence is undoubtedly one easy way to reduce the number of OPRA requests and provide transparency to the community.

I challenge the administration and the BOE to provide their rationale for selecting and approving Mr. Hopkins. Otherwise, it’s just a poorly disguised salary increase.