School district officials are facing a Public Records Act request seeking documents related to special education settlements, claims and complaints.
Morgan Hill resident Lisa Pampuch, a leader among special education parents, and Board of Education member Shelle Thomas, hope the inquiry will help them assess the district's handling of special education programs.
The district has 10 days to respond from the date the request was filed, or May 1.
Pampuch and Thomas want to know how much time and money has been spent on special-education case settlements for the past four years, including legal counsel, mediation, pre-due process and due process procedures.
"What is not measured, is not managed," Pampuch said, when asked why she requested the information.
Pampuch is a newly elected alternate parent representative on the new Special Education Advisory Committee, which is made up of parents and district officials who work to address general concerns about special education.
Thomas said access to the information is a fundamental right a parent and a trustee should have. "I would hope that it wouldn't take the signature of an elected official for an information request to be taken seriously," she said. "A parent has as much right as any of us might have to get this information."
Public records requests are nothing new to the school district, according to Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources Jay Totter.
Superintendent Alan Nishino and Special Education Director Salli Price-Welsh could not be reached for comment.
The district recently responded to retired educator Don Kruse's request for similar information. He asked for most of the same information Pampuch and Thomas are asking for.
The Morgan Hill resident served last year as a facilitator between the Special Education Advisory Committee and the district.
The district responded to Kruse's request with an April 29 letter from Nishino.
"As a public agency, we are required to provide existing documents and/or reports, but we are not required to compile data or information in response to a request for public records," Nishino wrote.
In other words, if an interested party does not request information in the form the district keeps it, then the district is under no obligation to spend time or money pooling facts and figures from different forms into one summary to fulfill the request, according to Nishino's response.
Kruse, a former Santa Clara County Board of Education trustee, said he didn't expect to go the legal route to obtain the information. For one thing, he said he expected the courts would side with the district.
"They are technically correct," Kruse said. "The request was for information, not specific documents."
However, Kruse said the district didn't respond in a timely manner. He filed his request Feb. 12, and didn't get the response from Nishino until April 29. Calls by the Morgan Hill Times to the school district to confirm there was no interim response between these two dates were not returned by press time.
The district's response to Kruse's request doesn't assuage parents concerned about the quality of district special education programs.
Natalie Everett
Natalie Everett Natalie Everett is the education and city reporter for The Times. Reach her at (408) 779-4106, ext. 201, or neverett@morganhilltimes.com.
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