Recently in Pennsylvania public record Category

A truancy town hall in Dover scheduled for Monday night made me wonder if you could get truancy numbers from the state. And the answer is not literally -- at least, I couldn't find anything on the site -- but you can get dropout rates (scroll down to see the links), which, I believe it is generally agreed upon, can be linked to truancy rates.

A look at the 2007-2008 numbers* shows you that:

• Crispus Attucks, York County High, York City School District and York County School of Technology have dropout rates in the top 20 of all schools in Pennsylvania.
  
• No other county school had a dropout rate higher than 1.6 percent (Eastern York), and that ranked 172nd in the state of the 617 public, charter and other school districts listed.
  
• Six York County public school districts -- Southern York, West York, Dallastown, Central, York Suburban and South Eastern -- had dropout rates of less than 1 percent.
• 603 students dropped out -- including 117 from York City, 78 from York Tech, 59 from West Shore and 58 from CA.
  

But an observation from YorkCounts, which is sponsoring the town hall, is good to keep in mind when you're looking at the numbers. In its "Stay in School Initiative Report to the Community," it noted that the state's dropout rates are compiled by counting the number of students who were enrolled on Oct. 1 and still enrolled on the following Sept. 30.

 YorkCounts says that gives an incomplete picture of how many students are graduating within four years. Its research shows that between 1998 and 2008, 6,429 students dropped out of York County schools, and that in 2005-2006, the four-year graduation rate in York County was 78 percent.

PDE itself wrote a qualifier to the numbers in its introduction to the 2006-2007 dropout rates, noting that rates at a school like York County High could be inflated because "their students are at high risk of dropping out and many are attending school while working full time. The methodology of calculating dropouts must be examined to truly understand these high dropout rates. ..."

YorkCounts says the town hall, titled "Kids, Truancy and a County at Risk," will focus on the United Way of York County's Stay in School Report as well as the work of Judge John Uhler's Truancy Task Force (read more about the latter at the Juvenile Court Judges' Commission site; click on "current JCJC newsletter.")
 
*You can crunch your own numbers at the PDE Web site, but you have to have Microsoft Excel (or OpenOffice, which is free and has a good spreadsheet function, or some kind of spreadsheet capability). If you have neither but want more numbers, let me know in the comments section and I'll post them as soon as I can.

I don't mean to make fun of the state's conservation department, because earthquakes -- even small ones -- aren't too terribly funny. But I thought it was interesting, and illustrative, that when the DCNR made public a Columbia University report on Dillsburg earthquakes, it did so with a 500-word disclaimer.

It indicates how skittish government agencies can be even when dealing with what is a public record. They want to make sure that if the ground opens up and someone's house falls in, that person doesn't come back and say, 'According to the report you posted online, you said that wouldn't happen, so now you owe me the cost of my house.'

That scenario seems a little silly. Common sense makes you wonder who would sue a public agency for posting a public document online; and common sense makes you wonder who wouldn't understand that it's an individual's responsibility what he or she does with the information.

But there are lots of lawsuits out there. So it's hard to blame DCNR for uttering, in lilting legal language, "The user shall save the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania harmless and indemnify it from any suits, claims, or actions arising out of the use of or any defect in these Open-File Reports or accompanying documentation."

By the way, our story on the report is here. And just for kicks, here's the "tagcloud" of most frequently used words in the disclaimer:

Since we've been interested in public officials' e-mails for a while here -- thanks mostly to an ongoing issue in York Township -- figured I'd pass this one along:

According to the Boston Globe, as quoted on the blog "Death by e-mail," federal officials subpoenaed e-mails from the mayor's office, and the Boston Globe asked to see the same e-mails from the mayor's office. Apparently a mayor's aide switched computers -- and thus got rid of e-mails -- shortly after the requests. But the city found the e-mails on the hard drive of the old computer and has posted them online.

The blog notes most of the e-mails are "extremely boring." Still, it keeps awareness on the idea that public officials who conduct public business via e-mail are creating public records by doing so.

A Lebanon County woman who drew national attention last year for carrying a loaded handgun to her child's soccer game was shot dead Wednesday in what police are calling a murder suicide.

Each year the state police put out a report on firearm trends in the state.

Here's some local info:

Handgun sales

• In York County, where about 420,000 people live, there were more than 17,000 guns sold in 2008. About 45 percent were handguns.
• In Lebanon County, which has about 128,934 residents, there were about 9,100 guns sold, with about 47 percent being handguns.

License to carry

• York County had 5,777 of these permits issued in 2008. As a percent of the county's total population, about 1.4 percent got one of these permits that year.
• Lebanon County had 1,651. That's about 1.3 percent of the population.

(Photo credit: Meleanie Hain sports a holstered Glock at her daughter's soccer practice in September 2008. Lebanon Daily News)

In my story yesterday about a settlement payment to a former director of the York County School of Technology, I had to use an estimate for his payout.

The settlement, which came Wednesday via a Right-to-Know request, showed up on my desk around 3:30 p.m. The contract didn't spell out his salary, and my last record was from 2005-2006.

Today, in response to another Right-to-Know request, I got the updated salary from the state's pension board for educators, the Pennsylvania Public School Employees' Retirement System.

Former director James A. Kraft made $126,438.73 as of June 30. Under his settlement agreement he is due his weekly salary until March 31. That's $87,534. He's also getting health care. In return, he's agreed not to sue the district.

It can't be possible that North Codorus Township is the only municipality that's in a bit of a spat with its residents over meeting minutes, but, as we reported in Sunday's paper, the issue there keeps on going. Previously, residents questioned whether they had access to tapes of meetings, then complained that the tapes were destroyed after the official minutes were made.

This time, the issue is how much information you'll find in the minutes should you want to take a look. A resident wanted in-depth information, and the township responded by saying meeting minutes would be kept to a minimum.

Any decision that restricts someone's right to find out what its government is doing is a step backward (although, logically, there has to be some distillation of what goes on at meetings, particularly if a long-winded orator arises and regales the assembled with a marathon of words).

But at least supervisor Dennis Luckenbaugh appears to be on the side of transparency. He said he and new township manager Mark Derr are working toward being more open with information. Those who favor public access should be glad to hear that.

Court records involving lawsuits or other civil matters can be some of the most interesting public records you can look at. Someone who's suing someone else, or making some kind of claim, lays out their case -- and when they do, they often lay it out as completely and (they hope) convincingly as they can.

That looks like what the York City school board is doing in its court filing declaring that an elected seat is vacant on its board (scroll to 'Reading Room'). The filing goes into some detail -- including 18 'findings of fact' -- as it shows the public, through the court filing, why it voted to removed Hiawatha Powell from the board.

Powell refutes the school boards claims and he has appealed its decision, so the matter is yet to be decided for good. You can also read his appeal.

Meanwhile, through the school board's document, you get a glimpse behind the scenes from the board's perspective, while understanding that Powell has the right to contest any and all 'findings of fact' that the board uses to support its action.

And, importantly, it all happens in public view -- because both the board and an individual board member have to be accountable to the people who elected them and whose tax dollars pay for what they do. You can look at the board's filing and assess its reasoning for yourself.

The Daily Record/Sunday News' story on the matter is on our Education page.

I wrote a couple days ago that state Rep. Jim Christiana was having a news conference about a bill calling for an 'online transparency database' and that I'd try to get more info about what it was.

Well, here you go:

According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and the Washington Observer-Reporter, HB 1460 would make all state spending available in an online database. The O-R reports that would even include "lawmakers' everyday purchases from their expense accounts."

And the T-R reported that former Rep. Bill DeWeese, who was Democratic leader during the Bonusgate scandal but has not been accused of wrongdoing, said had the database been in place, Bonusgate would not have happened.

If you want to keep an eye on that bill, you can get more info here.

In a final determination issued June 22, the state Office of Open Records granted access to details of proposed budgets for school districts.

According to the final determination:

Pat Barget, of the South Eastern Tax Reform Coalition, requested a "copy of the itemized budget, with line by line description" from the South Eastern School District on May 4.

On May 12 the district denied the requests, saying it was a draft document that's not a public record.

The district's argument did not convince the open records office. In fact, the office used the district's denial wording against them. The the denial district called it a "proposed expenditure budget," a specific document that is considered public by the state Department of Education.

South Eastern has one of the most active taxpayer groups in York County. They are a constant presence at school board meetings, and actively take part in public meetings by asking questions and requesting information.

A member of that group alerted the York Daily Record in June 2008 to the proposed purchase of a nearly $100,000 grand piano by the district. After our paper reported on the issue the district backed away, as many taxpayers objected to the district buying a Steinway & Sons Model D concert grand piano, which is one of the finest (and most expensive) pianos in the world. 

A few weeks ago we wrote that we had asked York County for 911 time-response logs, and that the county had decided that logs were simply a list of times, without addresses or geographical locations of where units were headed -- thus making the information useless.

We appealed to the state's new Office of Open Records. Reporter Ted Czech, in his appeal, made the point that the legislature's intent in making time-response logs public was to allow people to assess first-responders' performance. Without addresses or at least a cross-street, Czech wrote, it's impossible to do that.

The open records office agreed (read the decision here under "Reading Room"), and made a couple of key points: One, that if a record is not specifically defined in the new open records law, the open records office has the authority to define it; and two, that the "legislative intent to expressly include time response logs as public information is to allow the public the ability to assess the efficiency of the emergency responders. ... The county has offered no support in the Act that permits them to withhold an address within a time response log, which they admit that they possess."