In a recent resolution on Foster v. Pennridge School District, AP 2023-0931, significant clarification was bestowed on the bounds and limitations of what constitutes public records, especially in regards to school district affairs. This decision came from the Office of Open Records and revolves around the premise of Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law, specifically its non-criminal exception. Throughout this case, the crux of the issue dealt with comprehensive complaints concerning reading materials accessible in a student library, subsequently igniting an investigation by the respective school district.
As reported by JD Supra, the Office of Open Records affirmed that the Pennridge School District acted within the law when it chose to redact and withhold certain email threads that discussed the investigation into the aforementioned complaints. The reasoning behind this content suppression is backed up by the non-criminal exception of the Pennsylvania Right-to-Know Law. This law exception asserts that such communications are exempt from public record status rendering the district’s actions lawful in this circumstance.
This ruling essentially infers that despite having a broad umbrella of what may be available under the right-to-know law, conversations and communications divulged in the course of an investigation surprisingly do not fall within this domain of public records as one could have anticipated. Consequently, such records involving the investigation are deemed private and rightfully non-accessible to the public. This decision was endorsed by the legal firm Tucker Arensberg, P.C.
As corporate and legal professionals, this assertion provides an intriguing precedent that may have far-reaching implications for how public records are presented and handled in subsequent cases especially within the context of school district affairs and investigations.
This precedent bodes the question of whether the scope of what’s publicly accessible should be reconsidered in these settings or if more exceptions will gradually cleave away at the notion of ‘public records’. However, as it stands, the non-criminal exception of the Pennsylvania Right-to-Know Law underscores and strengthens the sanctity of the investigation process and its related communications.