Kaplan files complaints against district

Arts Infused Literacy costs, AFG results in dispute.

By: Lea Kahn
   School board member Leon Kaplan has filed complaints at the state level, alleging that his efforts to seek information about specific educational programs have been stymied by Schools Superintendent Max Riley and school board President Philip Benson.
   In a "denial of access" complaint filed Jan. 14 with the New Jersey Government Records Council, Dr. Kaplan claims that Dr. Riley denied his request for budgetary information regarding the school district’s Arts Infused Literacy program in July 2004.
   Dr. Kaplan also filed a petition with the state commissioner of Education on Jan. 24, alleging that school board President Benson denied his request for a progress report regarding the school district’s success in meeting academic performance goals set out in the district’s Accreditation for Growth strategic plan.
   Asked about the filings with the GRC and the commissioner of Education, Dr. Riley referred inquiries to Mr. Benson.
   It is very difficult for two people to have a dialogue if it’s only through Lea Kahn’s byline," Mr. Benson responded. "This is not the way the school board could or should function, if there is going to be a true give-and-take."
   Dr. Kaplan filed a request under the Open Public Records Act seeking a complete, item-by-item listing of all expenses, both direct and indirect, for the Arts Infused Literacy program in the 2004-05 school year budget. The request sought amounts, recipients and purposes of the expenditures, where possible.
   Arts Infused Literacy is an experimental approach used in the district to teach young children how to read through the fine arts.
   In an Aug. 2, 2004 memorandum to Dr. Kaplan, Dr. Riley denied his request "because the (financial) documents that you demanded are not documents kept by the district. These documents may be researched and created on the direction of a Board committee in accord with Board practice," he wrote.
   Dr. Kaplan, in the denial of access complaint, wrote that Dr. Riley’s excuse for not providing the requested information, that it would require research, "is dubious at best." The school district has sophisticated financial software, so researching such a request should not be onerous, he wrote in his complaint.
   "Not having this information thwarts my ability to make sound judgments, as required by the Code of Ethics for school board members and, I feel, violates my rights as a citizen to have information about how my tax dollars are being spent," Dr. Kaplan wrote in his GRC complaint.
   While he has questions about the effectiveness of Arts Infused Literacy program, the greater principle is that school board members should have greater access to how the district spends taxpayers’ dollars, Dr. Kaplan said.
   Seeking more information about AFG, Dr. Kaplan initially contacted Dr. Riley. The superintendent referred Dr. Kaplan’s request to Mr. Benson. Dr. Kaplan wrote to Mr. Benson, who in turn responded that he should go through the committee process.
   There are three standing committees of the school board, the Resources Committee, the Planning and Legislative Relations Committee and the Educational Programs Committee.
   The Resources Committee oversees the budget and the development of the budget. It also deals with day-to-day facilities maintenance issues and construction issues related to the building additions.
   The Planning and Legislative Relations Committee is involved in the district’s strategic plans. It looks at long-term issues affecting the district, such as the need for expansion projects. The committee also works with lawmakers on issues affecting the district.
   The Educational Programs Committee deals with curriculum, programs and personnel. It is the committee that is involved with AFG and the Arts Infused Literacy programs, for example.
   In his petition to the Commissioner of Education, Dr. Kaplan wrote that whenever he had requested information from one of the three standing committees, that request was denied.
   The petition asks that Dr. Riley and Mr. Benson "should be advised that they are required to make the specified information and similar information pertaining to school finances and performance available to me and other interested citizens in a timely manner."
   The AFG measures are important as a major indicator of the school district’s performance, Dr. Kaplan wrote in the petition. By withholding that information, Dr. Riley and Mr. Benson "make it impossible for people to exercise informed oversight or judge how our school system is doing," he wrote.
   But Mr. Benson responded that the school board’s policy is that individual board members are privy to all information available through records maintained by the administration.
   "There is a process for receiving such information that rests in the hands of the various committees. Those committees function to establish policy and to review staff performance," Mr. Benson said.
   "The reason we have the policy and procedure is to be able to systematically garner information and provide a method for prioritizing that information and the need for that information," he said.
   Mr. Benson said school board members can sit in on committee meetings or they can ask the chairman of a committee to fill them in on the activities of that committee. The flow of information from the committees is "wide open," he said.
   Meanwhile, state Department of Education spokesman Richard Vespucci said the respondent , Mr. Benson, has 20 days to respond to the petition, starting from the date that he received it.
   Once a petition and answer have been received, the documents are reviewed and a determination is made whether to proceed to the Office of Administrative Law, Mr. Vespucci said. The commissioner could make a decision on the petition, but the most likely scenario would be for it to go to the Office of Administrative Law.
   If it is sent to the Office of Administrative Law, an administrative law judge would hold a hearing on the dispute, Mr. Vespucci said. There is no timetable for when a hearing would be held, he said, adding that it depends on the schedules of the persons involved in the dispute.
   Once a hearing has been held, the Office of Administrative Law judge issues an initial recommendation as to how the commissioner should decide the case, Mr. Vespucci said. Once the initial recommendation has been made, the commissioner has 45 days to review the case and make a final decision, to uphold the initial recommendation, overturn it or modify it, he said.
   E.J. Miranda, a spokesman for the GRC, said the council had received Dr. Kaplan’s complaint. The next step is to offer the two sides a chance to come to an agreement through mediation, he said.
   The two parties have been contacted regarding mediation, and the GRC is waiting to find out whether they will accept mediation, Mr. Miranda said. If mediation is rejected by either party, then the GRC will begin a formal review of the complaint.
   Mr. Miranda said there is no timetable for resolving the issue, if it proceeds to the next step of a formal review. It is done on a case by case basis, so there is no way to determine how soon the issue would be resolved, he said.