Open Records

What was supposed to be a challenging task seemed all but difficult Tuesday as I wrote a letter to the Methacton School District, requesting certain files and records for my personal viewing. Although my own interest played a part, the main reason I wrote the letter was for my Journalism 220 class which is taught by Michele McCoy at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. At first I thought this assignment would be challenging seeing as how people are often reluctant to give up information that could possibly be used against them, but I found that my County and school district were happy to help.
I went about collecting this information through a series of steps. First, I looked up the Legislators for Montgomery County, the county that I live in, finding the names of five legislators who had signed on in support of improving Pennsylvania's open records law. Next, I went to my county's website and found an email address for my school district and contacted them by email requesting the following information: The contract of Methacton High School's superintendent and the documents reflecting the total amount spent on legal fees by the Methacton School District in 2006. Within four hours I received an email from the district stating that my request had been forwarded to our district's Right to Know Officer, Mr. Denis McCall, Director of Business Services. I still have yet to get a reply from McCall, but am fairly certain that my request will be granted in the near future.
Overall, I believe that the bill passed for open records is a great idea. Making this information from government agencies available to the public is only fair in my opinion. For those that say that this is impeding on their privacy, they are wrong. We as a people have a right to know what and who are tax dollars are being spent on. The bill also has 30 exceptions to submitted requests which will keep people and agencies safe from releasing information that could harm them in anyway, however, I feel that they could use these exceptions to their advantage. But we can only hope that this will not happen.