Merry Christmas

There's going to be a brief pause in posting and comment approvals as Christmas approaches. We'll see about catching up on things starting again on the 26th.

Thank you to everyone for your emails and good wishes for the holiday.

Whatever your background or heritage, please accept our best wishes for a blessed holiday.

Refurbish or Replace: 90 Year Old School

From the Inquirer. They're trying to decide about refurbishing or rebuilding.


Plans to refurbish Camden High School reconsidered
By Jonathan Tamari and Matt Katz Posted on Mon, Dec. 22, 2008

New Jersey officials are reconsidering how to use $110 million budgeted for refurbishing Camden High School.

Earlier this month, the Schools Development Authority, the state agency charged with building schools in urban areas, delayed plans to spend an initial $21 million to repair the high school's facade, which in recent years has crumbled so badly it has been held up by scaffolding.

Authority officials say they are committed to investing in the 90-year-old school, but they have raised questions about how best to mesh efficient construction with preserving the building.

School officials and longtime Camden residents have opposed the idea of demolishing the building, known as the "castle on the hill" because its spires reach into the sky above the main entrance.

Yet building a new school could prove cheaper than refurbishing the old one.

"If you asked me on a personal level if I'd like to see the facade renovated and the rest of the building modernized, I would love that," said Jose Delgado, school board member. "But that may not be the option I have because the money is finite and it's somebody else's money."

Despite its academically troubled and chronically violent reputation, the 1,500-student school has a strong network of supporters and alumni.

"The community and the board want Camden High's castle on the hill to remain the castle on the hill, at least the facade," said Bart Leff, a spokesman for the district.

But the decision might not rest with the community. Authority and school officials expect to meet in January to decide how best to use the state money set aside for the school.

"Ultimately, our fiduciary obligation is to build schools which are safe, efficient and affordable," authority chairman Kris Kolluri said. "We intend to do just that within the context of balancing the community needs with the needs of the students."

Kolluri, who took over the authority at the start of December, hopes to spend a new infusion of cash wisely after an initial school-building program was mired in waste.

The agency, formerly the Schools Construction Corp., was roundly criticized for lax management as it spent $6 billion for schools in 31 mostly poor, urban districts.

Gov. Corzine recently approved $2.9 billion more in borrowing for those areas. State officials have made a point that they expect less-lavish plans this time.

"Our goal is to spend that money wisely and provide a 21st-century school," Kolluri said.

Right to Know Exceptions

From the BCCT

Pa. Right-to-Know law contains 30 exceptions

By The Associated Press
The Associated Press

Pennsylvania's new Right-to-Know Law contains exceptions for 30 categories of records. Most do not apply to financial records or aggregated data, such as spreadsheets and databases. A summary of the exceptions:

1. LOSS OF FUNDS/PERSONAL SECURITY: Records that, if disclosed, would result in the loss of federal or state funds. Also, records whose release would be reasonably likely to result in substantial and demonstrable risk of physical harm to a person or to his or her personal security.

2. PUBLIC SAFETY: Records that, if disclosed, would be reasonably likely to jeopardize homeland security or public safety or preparedness.

3. INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY: Records that, if disclosed, would be reasonably likely to endanger the safety or security of a building, public utility, infrastructure or information storage system.

4. COMPUTER SECURITY: Records that, if disclosed, would be reasonably likely to jeopardize computer security.

5. HEALTH RECORDS: Medical, psychological and related records that contain individually identifiable health information.

6. PERSONAL IDENTIFICATION: Records containing all or part of a person's Social Security number; driver's license number, personal financial information; home, cellular or personal telephone numbers; personal e-mail addresses; employee numbers or other confidential personal identification numbers; a spouse's name, marital status, beneficiary or dependent information. Also, records containing home addresses of law-enforcement officers and judges.

7. PERSONNEL RECORDS: Letters of reference or recommendation, unless they involve an appointment to fill a vacancy in an elected office or an appointed office that requires confirmation by the state Senate.

Also, performance ratings or reviews; academic transcripts; state civil-service test results and certain local test results; applications of job applicants who are not hired; workplace support services information; written criticism about a public employee; grievance material; information about discipline, demotion or discharge contained in a personnel file, unless it involves final action by an agency that results in demotion or discharge.

8. COLLECTIVE BARGAINING: Records related to collective-bargaining strategy or negotiations, and exhibits and transcripts in arbitration cases involving collective-bargaining disputes or grievances. Final contracts and arbitration awards are public.

9. DRAFTS: Drafts of bills, resolutions, regulations, policies, management directives and ordinances.

10. DELIBERATIONS: Records reflecting internal, predecisional deliberations of agencies, such as a budget recommendation, a legislative proposal or the strategy for winning approval of such proposals.

(Records requesting state funding or grants or the results of public-opinion polls are public. Also public are documents that are presented to a quorum of a public board for deliberation , such as the packets board members routinely receive , so long as they are not otherwise exempt under the law.)

11. TRADE SECRETS: Records that reveal trade secrets or other confidential proprietary information.

12. WORKING PAPERS: Notes and working papers used by a public official or employee strictly for personal use, such as message or routing slips.

13. DONATIONS: Records revealing the identity of a person who makes a donation to an agency, unless the donation is intended to provide remuneration or other tangible benefit to a public official or employee.

14. UNPUBLISHED ACADEMIC PAPERS: Unpublished lecture notes, manuscripts, articles, creative works, research material and scholarly correspondence related to a community college or state-owned university.

15. ACADEMIC TRANSCRIPTS: Academic transcripts; examinations; examination questions and answers; and examination scoring keys used by schools and licensing agencies.

16. CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIVE RECORDS: Records related to or resulting in a criminal investigation. (Police blotters, private criminal complaints and traffic reports are public.)

17. NON-CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIVE RECORDS: Records related to non-criminal investigations, including complaints submitted to agencies, work papers underlying an audit and records that reveal the identities of confidential sources. (Records of civil fines or penalties, settlement agreements, license revocations or similar decisional documents are public.)

18. 911 CALLS: Recordings and transcripts of 911 calls, although an agency or court may release these if deemed to be in the public's interest. Time-response logs are public.

19. DNA & RNA: Records containing DNA & RNA information.

20. AUTOPSIES: Contents of autopsy report, except for the victim's name, cause of death and manner of death.

21. MINUTES: Draft minutes of any public meeting until the next scheduled meeting of the agency. Any records of private, executive-session discussions.

22. APPRAISALS & REVIEWS: Records involving real-estate appraisals, engineering estimates, environmental reviews, audits and other evaluations involving a potential agency lease, acquisition or disposal of real property. Exception ends when a final decision is made.

23. LIBRARY & ARCHIVE USERS: The circulation and order records of an identifiable individual or group.

24. LIBRARY & MUSEUM DONORS: Rare books, documents and other materials contributed by gifts, grants or bequests to the extent imposed as a condition by the donor.

25. ENDANGERED SITES & SPECIES: Records identifying the location of an archaeological site or endangered plant or animal species not already known to the public.

26. CONTRACT BIDS: Proposals for the procurement or disposal of supplies, services or construction before the award of a contract or the opening and rejection of all bids. Also, certain financial information about the bidders.

27. INSURANCE: Records of communication between an agency and its insurance carrier, administration service organization or risk-management office. (Contracts between agencies and these entities are public.)

28. SOCIAL SERVICES: Records identifying people who apply for or receive social services, or disclosing the services they receive and other personal information.

29. CONSTITUENTS: Correspondence between state legislators and their constituents, and accompanying records that identify constituents who request assistance or other services. (Correspondence between lawmakers and lobbyists is public.)

30. MINORS: Records containing the name, home address or date of birth of child who is 17 or younger.

Right to Know Q and A

From the BCCT

How to file a Right-to-Know request under Pa. law

By The Associated Press
The Associated Press

Common questions and answers about how to file a request under Pennsylvania's new Right-to-Know Law:

Q: How do I request a record from a local, county or state agency?

A: You may make the request in person, by mail, fax or e-mail. You may make the request verbally, but to preserve your right to appeal a negative decision, you must put it in writing.

A standard request form can be downloaded from the state Office of Open Records Web site , http://openrecords.state.pa.us , and printed. Local agencies may use their own forms, but also must accept this one.

Your request must be specific enough for the agency to understand what record you want. Officials may need to ask you questions to fulfill your request, but the law bars them from requiring you to explain why you want the record.

Q: How soon can I expect a response?

A: Agencies are required to respond promptly within five business days. They may grant or deny your request in that time, or under certain circumstances , if a request is extensive, for example, or a record contains nonpublic information that must be blacked out, or redacted , may advise you that it will take as much as 30 additional days to produce the records.

Q: How far back in time may I go in requesting records?

A: All records in the possession of an agency are covered by the law, no matter how old they are.

Q: Will I have to pay anything for these records?

A: Under a fee schedule established by the state Office of Open Records, agencies may charge as much as 25 cents per page for photocopying. The fee schedule bars additional charges for the cost of retrieving or redacting records, although they may charge you the actual cost of reproducing blueprints and certain other specialized documents.

Q: Can agencies require me to pay in advance?

A: Only if the total bill is expected to exceed $100.

Q: What if my request is turned down or ignored?

If the agency fails to respond in five business days, your request is deemed denied. In that event, or if the agency denies the request within the period, you have 15 business days to file an appeal to the Office of Open Records.

Judicial agencies, ranging from district judges to the state Supreme Court; legislative agencies; the statewide row offices (attorney general, auditor general and treasurer) are allowed to designate their own appeals officers in place of the Office of Open Records. District attorneys may appoint officers to hear appeals related to criminal investigative records of local agencies.

Further appeals may be pursued in court by either side. Appeals involving state agency denials would be filed in Commonwealth Court, and appeals involving local agencies would be filed in county common-pleas court.

Q: What are the penalties for violating the Right-to-Know Law?

A: Public agencies found by a court to have denied access to records in bad faith face a civil fine of as much as $1,500. Agencies or officials that do not promptly comply with a court order can be fined as much as $500 a day until the records are provided.

Bristol's $34M School Opening Soon

While Reiter is shuttered, and Grandview and the high school are serving temporary duty, lets think about "what if"...

$34M school expected to be completed by spring
Posted in News on Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008 at 4:17 pm by Joan Hellyer

The price tag for Bristol’s new pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade school is pushing $34 million thanks to a 2007 soil remediation delay, change orders and contractor claims, officials said.

That’s almost $4 million more than originally estimated when construction got underway in late 2006, and about $800,000 more than the most previous estimate on the project. The school board plans to use bond money and about $1.7 million from the district’s capital reserve fund to cover all the expenses, said Joseph Roe, Bristol’s business manager.

The building, located at 450 Beaver Street adjacent to Warren Snyder-John Girotti Elementary School, is designed to serve approximately 1,110 students, district officials said.

It was supposed to open in September, but various delays, including the removal of about 2,000 tons of urban fill last year, have forced officials to push its scheduled opening to Sept. 2009.

Construction on the expansive, two-story brick building with a red and gray color scheme is about 80 percent complete, said Angelo Rago, the district’s project representative, during a tour of the school last week.

The building’s roof, structural supports, and heating and cooling systems are in place. Crews are now working on the school’s interior. The project should be finished by the spring, Rago said.

The school includes about 70 classrooms spread across a couple different floors and wings to separate the different age groups of the students, he said. The early learning center is positioned on the west side of the building and includes a separate entrance for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students.

The first floor of the classroom wing on the building’s east side will be for first- through fifth-grade students and the wing’s second floor will be for middle school-aged students, said Rago and Snyder-Girotti Principal Rosemary Parmigiani during the tour. Special education classes will be spread throughout the building.

The school includes a cafeteria, gymnasium and auditorium, and not just one space for all three, as is the case at the old Snyder-Girotti.

“Now we’ll be able to have three events going on at the same time,” Parmigiani said. “It’s something we didn’t have before.”

The school also includes a family and consumer science room and a state-of-the-art media center and library.

Along the tour, Principal Parmigiani, Rago, and John D’Angelo, the school board’s vice president, repeatedly pointed out areas designated for storage. “That’s because we don’t have any room now,” Parmigiani said.

At this point in the project, district officials don’t foresee any major problems developing, D’Angelo said.

“But we remain vigilant, because we want to stay on top of the [project’s] expenses,” he said.

Right to Know, Part III

From the BCCT.

Private business under scrutiny
By MARK SCOLFORO
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Part 3 of 5/Read Part 4 Friday

HARRISBURG — Private businesses that do business with state and local governments in Pennsylvania are about to find themselves having to make some records available to the public.

But there are signs that many of those contractors are unaware of the provision in the new Right-to-Know Law, and experts are debating just how it will apply — a dispute that may end up being resolved by the courts.

One such group consists of the hundreds of school bus contractors, who provide about 85 percent of student transportation for the state’s 501 school districts.

Pennsylvania School Bus Association Executive Director Selina Pittenger said she hasn’t fielded questions from members about the new law.

“They’re probably thinking, ‘We’ve already been under the microscope,’ ” Pittenger said.

Terry Mutchler, director of the state Office of Open Records, said there’s a “very solid legal question” as to whether, for example, the resume of a school bus contractor’s driver would be a public record.

“If you have a bus driver that’s fired for child molestation or whatever criminal act it is, I think that there is a very strong public policy argument that the public should be made aware,” Mutchler said. “The reality is, we’re going to see a lot of litigation over very astute questions just like that.”

Major state agencies and officials with Pennsylvania townships and boroughs also said the contractor issue has barely registered on their radar screens, although that may change once the new law takes effect next month.

For county governments, the most significant third-party contracts likely to be affected involve nursing homes, mental health services and similar functions, said Doug Hill, executive director of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania.

The trade group is advising county governments to review their existing contracts to see if they need to be revised in light of the additional reporting duties the new law requires, Hill said.

A lawyer for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association who has researched the issue argues there may be very few — if any — documents that fit the new law.

It lets anyone obtain contractor records directly related to a governmental function the contractor has performed for a state or local agency. The records would be obtained through the agency, not directly from the contractor.

PSBA lawyer Emily Leader said the problem is that the law doesn’t define “government function.” She believes, for example, that a paving company filling potholes on a township road or a bus company driving students to school wouldn’t necessarily fit the bill.

Governments are restricted by the state Constitution in what powers they can delegate, Leader said.

The state Supreme Court, in a 2003 decision, grappled with the relationship between a governmental body and an outside vendor. In that case, the justices ordered that the records be made public.

Even though the Westmoreland County Housing Authority allowed its insurer to completely handle the legal defense and negotiate terms of a confidential settlement in a federal gender discrimination lawsuit, it lost the case and had to give the Tribune-Review Publishing Co. a copy of a settlement agreement.

Clouding the issue is a 1997 state Supreme Court decision that said Millersville and West Chester universities, while state agencies subject to the Right-to-Know Law, didn’t have to provide a textbook seller with a list of course material. The state’s high court reasoned that the universities had no part in ordering or selling textbooks and did not solicit, compile or retain information on course materials.

Leader believes it’s significant that the new law refers to governmental functions rather than simply contracts. She considers it unbroken legal ground that the courts might have to plow.

Pennsylvania Newspaper Association lawyer Teri Henning, on the other hand, believes the intent of the law is straightforward.

Determining what qualifies, she said, involves looking at what role the contractor is playing, how it relates to the operations of government and whether it has previously been performed by governments.

“A lot of government functions are being outsourced by government agencies,” Henning said. “They are certainly entitled to do that if it makes more sense from an economic or efficiency standpoint. But it should not mean these records should be shielded from public view.”

Souderton Update

From the BCCT.

Battle fought over teacher pay

By RICH PIETRAS
Staff Writer

Practically everyone living in the Souderton Area School District got an unexpected — and unwanted — course in “Contract Negotiations 101” when teachers went on strike at the beginning of the school year.

Teachers returned to classes Sept. 19, but there is still no contract and teachers could strike again come spring.

At the crux of the debate has been salary and benefits — the school district has offered a three-year contract with pay raises averaging 2.5 percent, while the union wants a four-year pact with raises averaging 8.2 percent.

And if the request from the union didn’t raise eyebrows in September, it most certainly has during the economy’s scary slide. Jeffery Sultanik, the school board’s solicitor and chief negotiator, said the entire process has been disappointing.

“Obviously whenever there is a cessation in public services, the taxpayers who pay for the services, the school district, and especially the students suffer. Clearly the district is not pleased over this situation,’’ he said. “But we also remained baffled as to why the teachers have refused to move one inch on their salary demands, particularly in what has been characterized as the worst economic environment since the Great Depression. You don’t get a lot of people getting 8.2 percent increases.”

The teachers union points out that Souderton teachers’ starting salaries are the lowest in Montgomery County. The school board has argued it does not have the commercial tax base other areas enjoy, thus making comparing salaries difficult. Bill Lukridge, president of the union, said that while it has always considered the state of the economy, there are other factors to consider.

“The real issue is the amount of teachers we are losing … 20 teachers have left the district since the beginning of June for better pay. We know the economy isn’t the best, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to pay teachers fairly,” Lukridge said.

Lukridge also pointed to the new Souder Hill Towne Center proposed for what is now Souderton Area High School.

According to Lukridge, an economic survey of the area was completed for the nearly $66 million project and showed that residents who live within a mile of it have an average household income of $70,000. The average Souderton teacher salary is $61,600, which is $3,000 lower than the average teacher in Montgomery County.

“A 2.5 percent average increase will only keep them at the bottom for years to come and prevent us from keeping, as well as attracting, good teachers,” Lukridge said.

One of the few areas both sides have agreed upon is the low ranking of Souderton teachers’ starting salaries. At just over $37,000, they rank the lowest in the county. The school board has offered to increase them to just over $40,000.

Currently, both sides’ proposals are being reviewed by an arbitration panel, which has been reviewing data including public comments, since October. After a decision is rendered by the panel, both sides take it to a vote. But if either sides reject’s the final recommendation, the teachers could go back on strike in the spring for about a week.

“We’re hoping something happens soon after the holiday,” Lukridge said. “My goodness, we have been waiting since September.”