Breaking news from Delaware Valley Journal and investigative journalist Linda Stein this morning about Pennsbury School District and its efforts to avoid creating and retaining responsive records.
How Was The Google Chat Destruction Discovered?
After the filing of Right To Know requests (RTKs) that sought information from teachers related to their development of Lesson Plans and their use of the website TeachersPayTeachers.com to purchase classroom materials and lesson plans, multiple teachers came forward, sharing concerns that they did in fact produce Lesson Plans, but they were rarely collected or reviewed by Pennsbury administration. At the time, it was also shared by these teachers that their Google Chats didn’t retain a history of communications past two days. This was confirmed in an email from Pennsbury and then verified visually on district-issued laptops by Tim Daly on Back To School night on September 26, 2024. The email received from Pennsbury acknowledging the 24 hour retention period is below.
The gravity of this misconduct to utilize the Google Chat solution to avoid creating email-based public records is deeply concerning. From a perspective of civil lawsuits that the district might face, they are required by law to turn over all written communications as part of discovery. From a perspective of criminal investigations, use of Google Chat and records destruction could be construed as obstruction of justice when deletion is occurring within 24 hours. And with regards to Pennsylvania’s Open Records law, destruction of these records in under 5 business days makes them impossible to be requested under the law. Yet, at the time of this posting, Pennsbury has not updated their policies and continues to destroy records nearly 90 days after their admission, despite their actions coming under dispute in Office of Open Records appeals.
What Are The Retention Record Guidelines
Pennsbury is a member of the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials (PASBO), as are the vast majority of school districts across Pennsylvania. Membership costs range based on the number of employees and then paid for by the taxpayers of these school districts. PASBO offers a range of services and advice to the non-educator staff members that work at a school district, including guidelines on records retention as shown in PASBO publicly available Records Retention Schedule below:
As can be determined from the first page of record retention guidelines, all Correspondences / Email records should be retained for three years. The only questions that remain are when did Pennsbury disregard the PASBO guidelines and why did they do so?
It sure seems odd that Pennsbury would veer of their guidance when PASBO recognized with Pennsbury with its highest honor, Gary E. Reeser Memorial Award, given out to those that have “demonstrated professionalism, leadership, and innovation in the field of school business management.”