The Fairfax County School Board has been presented with a notice of intent to file a petition for Writ of Mandamus/Injunctive Relief as of this morning. They have not met their obligations under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. They are off by miles. That is a very, very bad thing to do.
The name of the petitioner has been redacted in order for followers of this site to more clearly focus on the issues at hand and the culpable parties involved, rather than take out their inappropriate remarks on the petitioner, who is the victim.
The procedure from here is that they have three days to produce the requested records or this can/will be filed with Circuit Court of Fairfax County, VA and an expedited court date can be obtained.
This is regarding the West Potomac High School Band issue brought up earlier. This is easy to read, but here is the summary-
There was an FCPS fee of $140 for West Potomac Marching Band last year. There was also an FCPS fee of $20 for Concert Band. Both were for Consumables. On June 24, 2015 it was requested that the school supply a student payment spreadsheet, the front and back of one canceled check used to pay either fee, the corresponding bank statement, and the accounting data printout showing the usage of these funds and the deposits made for the last year. Very simple. Very basic material. A few computer strokes required, maybe a contact to the bank to pull one check. Minimal work. Really.
The West Potomac Band Patrons Organization signed the MOA to help the school system. As you all know, if Boosters were helping with FCPS fees, these fees were supposed to go directly into an FCPS bank account, and the records were supposed to be kept in the FCPS computer system. FCPS CHARMS was also set up for this.
FCPS had 5 days to respond to the request. On July 1 they mailed a letter along with a disc that arrived Fourth of July weekend (after a reminder email had been sent as the disc had not arrived yet). They reported that "there were no responsive records at this time; we anticipate the documents will be available mid-August". This is not an acceptable response, plus, if the fees were collected last Fall, the records should have been available.
A letter was sent from Mr. Mandelbaum (Counsel for the Petitioner) on July 9th telling them this was not an appropriate response, that the procedure was to petition the court for an extension, and that this did not look like an appropriate situation to be needing an extension for as these records are very simply and uncomplicated. FCPS was reminded that willful and knowing withholding of public records can carry a $2000 fine, on top of the legal fees for the petitioner they have to pay.
The school system sent the notice that they needed the additional 7 days that they can take, dated July 14th. The calculated this on the follow-up request, NOT the original, which still was open, as it had not been properly responded to and closed out.
They were almost a week overdue on the response following the additional 7 days, a request was put in on July 29th for immediate proof that a disc had been mailed, or records needed to be sent via email. 6pm deadline.
Mr. Foster, Division Counsel, immediately responded to Mr. Mandelbaum and said that the Booster club had the records (so the records DO exist-what happened to the "no responsive records" claim from July 1st?) and that they couldn't get them because they were in the Booster Treasurer's house and it was locked, and they could not get access. Records that should be in the FCPS computer system, in the FCPS bank account information, easily obtained by the owner of the computer system and bank account-FCPS. They should not need a Booster volunteer to get this information. He asked for a handshake agreement to extend the response to August 10th. The Booster is "out of the country".
They are grossly overdue on their response times no matter how you look at it, their reasoning for not being able to provide records does not make sense, the petitioner refused to agree to a handshake agreement, and this document was prepared over the weekend and submitted to FCPS this morning.
Who wants to bet on whether FCPS can produce the requested documents that are "supposedly unavailable" within three days or if it will be necessary to file in Circuit Court? Is that Booster Treasurer who is "out of the country" going to hop on a plane and "come back early" for this? Mr. Foster says it is all his fault, even though all this information should be easily accessible by FCPS. He is adamant about this. Are they ever going to produce any records? This whole thing smacks of empty promises and smoke and mirrors. Money was taken from students. For a class. This should be very straightforward.
There are an additional 40 pages or so, showing the correspondence between the lawyers, the page showing the FCPS fees that was sent out by Steve the Booster President last year (and just why did he do that? all fee information was supposed to be disseminated by the school system), the Guidelines for use of Booster Organizations, the Power Point of the Booster presentation in February of 2014 showing how the CHARMS system was going to work, the signed MOA between the Band Boosters and the School system, etc. It's all there.
This whole story and a copy of the 49 page document is being disseminated all over the county, the state, and the country right now. We all know how people watch the schools, particularly FCPS.
Remember that according to the MOA if the Booster club was non-compliant with the terms of the MOA, FCPS had the right to demand all funds and records be turned in to them within three days. If Mr. Foster is correct, they were non-compliant. What was the principal doing all year about this? How was he paying the bills from the FCPS funds that were collected?
Congratulations. It was bound to happen.
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