School Closures in Philly
The School District of Philadelphia is shutting down a bunch of schools. Probably makes sense to close some of them, but some of the closures are a bad idea! I wanted to learn more about the process, so I did a RTKL request seeking, in part, the following records (from 1/1/25 to present):
A copy of all e-mails between Debora Carrera (City of Philadelphia Chief Education Officer) and/or Jemille Duncan (Mayor's Mgr of Legislative Affairs) and the School District of Philadelphia relating to the School District of Philadelphia Master Facilities Plan and/or Facilities Planning Process.
A copy of all emails between the Master Facilities Plan Project Team and Aramark Facilities Management relating to the Master Facilities Plan.
The District didn’t give me any responsive documents, so I filed an appeal to the Office of Open Records, which is currently pending. They submitted some attestations, a brief, and some exhibits in support of their argument, which essentially boils down to: “this is all exempt as records of a noncriminal investigation.”
Section 708(b)(17) of the RTKL exempts a government agency’s records that reflect a noncriminal investigation. But the School District’s master facilities planning process was not an “investigation.” The Board of Education literally called it “engaging community stakeholders in robust process” when it passed a resolution to do this whole thing, not “investigate.” I am submitting a brief addressing this exemption, along with the internal predecisional deliberations exemption the District cited.
get outta here with your “investigation” bs
I hope I win my appeal and get to see all of the requested documents. But for now, I did learn some interesting things just from the District’s position statement, affidavits, and exhibits.
As part of the Facilities Master Planning process, the District hired Aramark as a consultant:
The District paid Aramark over $2 million for… data warehousing?
The School District also hired a company called “DLR Group” (incorporated in NJ and operating out of Omaha, NE…) to develop revised catchment boundaries. At least these guys are cheaper than Aramark.
they’re just handing over student addresses to some randos in Nebraska, cool cool cool
Here is the full submission from the School District (minus the two attestations, because those PDFs were locked and I couldn’t combine them into one file??). Stay tuned for a copy of the brief I’m about to submit, and in a few weeks, the OOR’s Final Determination deciding whether I get the documents I requested.