03.13.07
Sunshine Week - our right to know
This week is national “Sunshine Week” (Sunshine Week web site; Sunshine Week blog), promoting open government and the public’s right to know. For last year’s Sunshine Week, the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle conducted a freedom of information audit to obtain copies of its school district’s reports of violent and disruptive incidents in school buildings. Even though this is a report that each school was required to prepare and file under New York state’s Safe Schools against Violence in Education (SAVE) law, many of the schools were less than cooperative in complying with open records requests for copies of the reports. The newspaper used the incident reports to publish a comprehensive report on safety in its district’s schools.
