Quest for contract documents became summer-long ordeal

by Paul Socolar

With this Fall 2006 edition examining the School District's increased reliance on educational service contracts with outside companies, the Public School Notebook had the perfect opportunity to conduct a test - how forthcoming and open would the District be with key information about contracts? We were seeking answers to important questions: who gets how much money, why they get it, and what results they are achieving.

We began our quest for information in early July, but before long it became apparent that getting answers would not be easy. The effort to secure documents from the District was slowed by disorganization, understaffing, poor record-keeping, and, apparently, resistance.

We were shuttled from the Office of Communications office to the General Counsel, asked to resubmit requests, filed a formal appeal, and still waited for weeks for contracts - indisputably public information - to be produced. The waiting continued even after CEO Paul Vallas issued a directive to staff: “Turn everything over ASAP.”

But if you count the large files we received just a day or two before we went to press, the District staff ultimately did put together substantial responses to nearly all the Notebook's two dozen requests.

“We're hoping in the future the process will be more conducive to giving reporters contract information,” said Cecilia Cummings, District senior vice president of communications and community relations. She said that with the appointment of a permanent head of the District's legal office in September, the District will work on smoothing its procedures for handling public records requests.

Cummings acknowledged that “withholding of information that is obviously part of public record is simply not acceptable,” and said that mix-ups and staff overload got in the way even though CEO Vallas “wanted you guys to get the materials as soon as possible.”

Our democracy is built upon the principle that newspapers have reasonable access to information. In our role as a community newspaper, the Notebook is premised on the understanding that meaningful school reform cannot occur without informed public participation and discussion of education issues.

But informed participation requires transparency; it is hard to have community discussion of school improvement if key information about what is going on is kept secret.

In a recent report titled Time to Engage, the local nonprofit group Research for Action noted a lack of transparency in the contracting process in Philadelphia.

The authors noted: “The process of developing and approving contracts has been largely hidden from public view. The public plays no role in choosing which firms or organizations will receive contracts, and because conversations about these contracts take place almost entirely outside of public view, it has little understanding of the rationale behind particular choices.”

Here is a chronology of what happened: