Second Appointment to View I-SS Records

After communicating with Mr. Neal Ramee, the I-SS attorney whose office is in Raleigh, I was granted an appointment to view some more I-SS records. The appointment was this past Wednesday (7/1/09). The records were in the conference room and I-SS had an observer in the room with me. Actually there were several observers as each one would stay for about a half an hour and then be relieved by the next person. I guess they wanted me to feel like I was in after-school detention. In reality, it did not bother me and I could see some reasoning for it since I did have access to some original school documents.

I just hope that Dr. Holliday doesn’t chastise me at the next School Board, as he did at the last Board meeting. As I mentioned in a previous post, Dr. Holliday accused me of forcing I-SS to spend $5,000.00 in attorney fees and staff time to respond to my requests for public records. Of course he failed to mention that federal law, state law, and even school policy gives me the right to ask for access to school records. This time he will probably state how much it cost to have school staff observe me while I examined the records.

Again, not all the records I requested were made available. They are still collecting some of the records. Also, I did not have time to look at all the records provided so I have already asked Mr. Ramee for another appointment.

The first documents I looked at were the I-SS Organizational charts. I had asked to see the I-SS Administrative Organizational Charts from 2001 to the present. Mr. Ramee had told me that they would be available but the charts for several school years were missing. There was one from May 2001 but the next one was dated March 2005. I don’t know if the ones from 2002, 2003, and 2004 no longer exist or if someone just did not want me to see them. I was hoping to see how quickly the number of Central Office Administrators increased over the years that Dr. Holliday was superintendent. I have asked Mr. Ramee to have I-SS produce all the charts that I requested.

I spent most of my time looking at the invoices from Jim Shipley and Associates (JSA) dated from August 2003 up to June 2005. In that two-year period, I-SS paid JSA $90,739.97 for Baldrige materials and training. Included in that amount was payment to JSA to have Brenda Clark provide training and consulting for a total of 10 days at $1,800.00 per day and a total of 10 more days at $2,050.00 per day. Also included was payment to JSA to have Marty Moore provide training and consulting for a total of 9 days at $1,800.00 per day. This also meant that I-SS had to pay all the travel expenses for Ms. Clark to make 7 trips to Iredell County and for Ms. Clark to make 2 trips to Iredell County. (Of course, I-SS is now paying Ms. Clark $129,900.00 a year and Ms. Moore $105,000.00 a year as employees.) There was also a registration payment of $495.00 to JSA in April 2004 for five I-SS administrators (Holliday, Lane, Hill, Dorton, and Allred) to attend a Baldrige seminar that was held in Florida. Since the travel expenses were not paid to JSA there was no invoice for the cost to send 5 administrators to Florida for the seminar. Even at 2004 prices it was probably no small amount.

While other school systems are spending their funds to make sure students have the supplies and technology needed for learning in the twenty-first century, I-SS spends hundreds of thousands of dollars, or even more, to adapt a twentieth century business model to education.

Appointment to Examine Records

Renee Dulin, Janey Munday, and I have been making plans to go to the Central Office and view some of the I-SS financial documents. Renee and I were planning to go Thursday of this week and Janey and I were going to go next Thursday. Renee called and tried to schedule for this Thursday but she received word that Mrs. Wike, I-SS Financial Officer, would be busy this week as she was preparing for the annual audit. Since we could not go in and examine the documents this week, Renee and I decided to meet at the Statesville Library and share the information that we each had been accumulating. It was interesting to see that we each had several letters from the I-SS attorney, Mr. William McMillan, with regard to information we had requested. Who knows how much money the administration could have saved if they had simply provided the information requested.

I called Mrs. Wike this morning (Friday) to schedule an appointment for Janey and me to examine documents. As Mrs. Wike was in a meeting, I left a message saying that Janey and I would like to examine the following documents next Thursday: the 2008 audit report, all invoices from Jim Shipley and Associates for the last two years, all I-SS database indexes, and all consulting contracts between I-SS and any business, organization, individual, or group of individuals from January 2002 until the present. Renee wants us to look at the audit report, Janey wants to look at the invoices, and I want to look at the indexes and contracts. This afternoon, I received a call from Dawn Creason, I-SS Public Relations Director, and she told me they would have the documents ready for us to examine next Thursday.

An interesting note is that, not only are they going to have the database indexes that I have been requesting for some time, they are also going to have the consulting contracts available for inspection. Just a couple of weeks ago I received a letter from the I-SS attorney telling me that I would have to pay $2,000.00 for the staff to research and accumulate the consulting contracts. That was based on 40 hours of staff time at $50.00 per hour. I had responded to Mr. McMillan that I should not have to pay for those contracts since they were existing records and NC State law states that agencies must provide copies of existing public records at a minimal cost, which is defined as the actual cost of reproducing the public record. I have not yet heard back from Mr. McMillan.

In order to try to get the administration to follow state law I also sent an e-mail yesterday to the Board members, several administrators, and the school attorney. The text of the e-mail is inserted below.

Since many of you don't seem to be aware of the NC State law with regard to accessing public records I am providing a web address that will take you to the relevant section of NC State Law. When someone asks for access to public records you cannot deny access, or charge a fee, because that information is hard to find, or it is stored off site, or you have to redact confidential information. I ask that all of you carefully study the law so that, when in the future, someone asks for access to, or copies of, public records, he or she will not get the run around as I have been getting for the last several months.

Web address for access to section of NC law regarding public records.

http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/HTML/ByChapter/Chapter_132.html

I don’t know if my response to Mr. McMillan or if my e-mail made a difference. I am just glad that the administration is finally allowing access to the requested information. There is other information I have asked for and not yet received but hopefully this will get Renee, Janey, and I some of the information we are looking for. I will write a post next week and let every one know what we find out.