Legal Question Of The Week - October 18, 2012
By Attorney Thomas B. Mooney, Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut
The "Legal Question of the Week" is a regular feature of the CAS Weekly NewsBlast. We invite readers to submit short, law-related questions of practical concern to school administrators. Each week, we will select a question and publish an answer. While these answers cannot be considered formal legal advice, they may be of help to you and your colleagues. We may edit your questions, and we will not identify the authors. Please submit your questions to: legalmailbag@casciac.org
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Dear Legal Mailbag: Last week I was at a PPT, and it got a little heated. As we were wrapping up, it was clear that the mother was still upset. That I can understand, but without warning she reached over and grabbed the notes I had been taking. Fortunately, I have good reflexes and I grabbed them back before she could leave with them. However, the mother was anything but apologetic, and she told me that she needed to see my notes because she was convinced that I had been making things up. I told her that my notes were private, and she simply said that we would see about that. Yesterday I received a Freedom of Information request insisting that I provide her with a copy of my notes. Do I have to? I confess that some of what I wrote isn’t very nice.
Signed,
My Private Notes
Dear Private:
Any information related to your job that you record, be it a letter, a memorandum or an email, is a public record. Public records are generally subject to public disclosure upon request in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act. The operative word here is “generally.” There are exceptions to the requirement for disclosure, and your notes fall within one of them. Specifically, “preliminary drafts or notes” are exempt from public disclosure if the public agency (here that would be you or the superintendent for whom you work) determines that the public interest in confidentiality outweighs the public interest in disclosure. The Appellate Court has ruled that this exemption from disclosure applies to notes a public official takes while doing his or her job. A further caution, however, is that you should not share those notes with others. Once you share the notes, they are not longer preliminary and you would lose the exemption.
The "Legal Question of the Week" is a regular feature of the CAS Weekly NewsBlast. We invite readers to submit short, law-related questions of practical concern to school administrators. Each week, we will select a question and publish an answer. While these answers cannot be considered formal legal advice, they may be of help to you and your colleagues. We may edit your questions, and we will not identify the authors. Please submit your questions to: legalmailbag@casciac.org
_____________________________________________________________________________
Dear Legal Mailbag: Last week I was at a PPT, and it got a little heated. As we were wrapping up, it was clear that the mother was still upset. That I can understand, but without warning she reached over and grabbed the notes I had been taking. Fortunately, I have good reflexes and I grabbed them back before she could leave with them. However, the mother was anything but apologetic, and she told me that she needed to see my notes because she was convinced that I had been making things up. I told her that my notes were private, and she simply said that we would see about that. Yesterday I received a Freedom of Information request insisting that I provide her with a copy of my notes. Do I have to? I confess that some of what I wrote isn’t very nice.
Signed,
My Private Notes
Dear Private:
Any information related to your job that you record, be it a letter, a memorandum or an email, is a public record. Public records are generally subject to public disclosure upon request in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act. The operative word here is “generally.” There are exceptions to the requirement for disclosure, and your notes fall within one of them. Specifically, “preliminary drafts or notes” are exempt from public disclosure if the public agency (here that would be you or the superintendent for whom you work) determines that the public interest in confidentiality outweighs the public interest in disclosure. The Appellate Court has ruled that this exemption from disclosure applies to notes a public official takes while doing his or her job. A further caution, however, is that you should not share those notes with others. Once you share the notes, they are not longer preliminary and you would lose the exemption.