Paul Sullivan v. Framingham, City of - Public Schools Department (SPR 20180201)

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts William Francis Galvin, Secretary of the Commonwealth Public Records Division Rebecca S. Murray Supervisor ofR ecords March 1, 2018 SPR18/201 Nancy Piasecki Executive Director of the Office of the Superintendent Framingham Public Schools 73 Mt. WayteAve., Suite 5 Framingham, MA 01702 Dear Ms. Piasecki: I have received the petition of Paul Sullivan appealing the response of the Framingham Public Schools (School) to a request for public records. G. L. c. 66, § 1O A; see also 950 C.M.R. 32.08(1). Specifically, Mr. Sullivan asserted that the school is "recreating documents" and sending them to him in response to his request. Mr. Sullivan also explains that the documents are "reformatting in an unusable size." Mr. Sullivan wishes to have the original documents. The School contends that Mr. Sullivan's requests were answered on January 2, 2018 and January 30, 2018. Appeal Mr. Sullivan sent an email to the School on January 29, 2018 requesting thatthe School "resend three documents in the correct format." Mr. Sullivan also states in the email that he "did not receive a communication letter with this request completion." He inquires whether there is any additional information responsive to his request. The School.sent a letter to Mr. Sullivan on January 30th providing the rosters of the "2017-2018 JV and Varsity hockey rosters for both the girls and boys HS teams." The letter also stated "[p]lease note that one female athlete on the girls varsity team and two male athletes on the boys varsity hockey team opted out of having their names shared. The information is being shared in the format in which it was provided." Mr. Sullivan sent another email to the School on February 13, 2018 requesting that the documents be provided in "proper formatting." The School responded to this email saying "[t]he law does not require that [they] re-create a document using a format requested by the person initiating an FOIA." The School claims they are "required to provide the document that is in existence, which is what [they] did." One Ashburton Place, Room 1719, Boston, Massachusetts 02108 • (617) 727-2832• Fax: (617) 727-5914 sec.state.ma.us/pre • pre@sec.state.ma.us

Ms. Nancy Piasecki SPR18/201 Page 2 March 1, 2018 The records access officer shall, to the extent feasible, provide the public record in the requestor's preferred format or, in the absence of a preferred format, in a searchable, machine readable format. The records access officer shall not be required to create a new public record in order to comply with a request, provided that furnishing a segregable portion of a public record shall not be deemed to be creation of a new record. G. L. c. 66, § 6A(d ); see also 950 C.M.R. 32.08(l)(f). It is unclear what Mr. Sullivan's preferred format is. Further, it is uncertain whether Mr. Sullivan is requesting the original roster documents from the School or requesting the School to provide the rosters in another format to comply with the request. This office encourages the School and Mr. Sullivan to communicate further to enable the School to provide the requested public records. G. L. c 66, § 10(a)(i) (the request must reasonably describe the public record sought). The duty to comply with requests for records extends to those records that exist and are in the possession, custody, or control of the custodian of records at the time of the request. See G. L. c. 66, § 10(a)(ii). Conclusion Accordingly, the School is ordered to produce records in Mr. Sullivan's preferred format, to the extent feasible, in a manner consistent with this determination, the Public Records Law, and its Regulations within ten business days. A copy of such response must be provided to this office. It is preferable to send an electronic copy of this response to this office at pre@sec.state.ma.us. Mr. Sullivan may appeal the substantive nature of the revised response within ninety days. See 950 C.M.R. 32.08(1). Sincerely, Rebecca S. Murray Supervisor of Records cc: Mr. Paul Sullivan