Franklin Regional will hire part-time secretary to help with Right-To-Know requests
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Franklin Regional officials will hire a part-time confidential secretary to help handle the increased number of Right-To-Know requests the district has received.
The Pennsylvania Right-to-Know Act, also known as the Pennsylvania Sunshine Law, is a series of laws designed to guarantee that the public has access to public records of governmental bodies like town councils and school boards.
The act also regulates how governmental bodies respond to such requests and lays out a timeline by which they must be completed.
“Donna has been swamped,” Superintendent Gennaro Piraino said of school board secretary and open records officer Donna Wolf. “This has almost become her entire job. It’s something we’ve seen in many other school districts, but it’s been exacerbated here.”
School board President Dr. Larry Borland said the proposal was long overdue.
“It’s been very, very substantially pushed by the board members, who literally have watched a pile of material growing, including normal work material, that is beyond the scope of one person to handle in an appropriate time.”
Recipients of a Right-To-Know query can request a 30-day extension, and they are not required to create records to satisfy a request. A request must be made for records that already exist, whether in a digital or paper format.
“People may not understand the amount of research that has to go into answering one of these,” school board member John Koury said. “Many are requesting information that goes back five to 10 years or longer. Some are digital, some are paper, and to make an accurate response, it just takes a lot of time.”
Fellow board member Paul Scheinert agreed.
“It’s an obligation of us as a school district to respond to those requests,” he said. “Unfortunately, this has to come at the expense of taxpayer dollars to fulfill them.”