The Superintendent and his perverted boss
Dear South Amboy School District,
This is a request for public records made under OPRA and the common law right of access. I am not required to fill out an official form. Please acknowledge receipt of this message.
Records requested:
Email logs for the Superintendent from Jan 1 2018 to July 31 2019
To be clear I am seeking email logs with the following fields for information from public records (Electronic Mail System) following fields are: sender, recipient, date, and subject of the emails to the Superintendent of the South Amboy School District from January 1, 2018 through May 31, 2019.
The requested fields of information from the identified emails constitute information stored or maintained electronically, N.J.S.A. 47:1A-1.1, and are therefore government records under OPRA. The email logs are government records, as defined by OPRA and therefore subject to disclosure. Electronically stored information extracted from an email is not the creation of a new record or new information; it is a government record. This request does not require a substantial amount of manipulation or programming of information technology.
Thank You
Dear South Amboy School District,
Please accept this addendum to clarify the request. Emails are being sought from Jan 1 2018 until July 31 2019. It was a typo on my end.
Yours faithfully,
D. Mifflin
D. Mifflin,
Thank you for your clarification. In accordance with decisions issued by
the Government Records Council, any request for emails or other
correspondence pursuant to OPRA must specify the following four items in
order to be considered a valid request: Sender, Recipient, Date(s), and
Subject. Wholesale requests for “any and all” emails that do not
specify all of these four items are considered overly broad. Accordingly,
your request as currently written is denied; however, you may submit a
more specific, limited request that includes the required information and
the Board will respond accordingly. Please also note that the broader
your request is, the more likely that a special service charge will apply
to respond to your request, so it is recommended to make your request as
specific as possible.
-Peter Frascella
Dear Peter Frascella,
I do not need to provide a subject matter or keyword for the log, nor do you need to review the underlying emails to produce it. This is not an unreasonable request. You cited a GRC decision, which is not legally binding, however the case I am citing is, Paff Vs. Galloway Township. I actually quoted the judges decision in my last clarification to you. Also, you cited another GRC decision or your own opinion. "Wholesale requests for “any and all” emails that do not
specify all of these four items are considered overly broad." and again I will site actual case law, in Wronko Vs. Jackson a request for ALL of a particular government document for a specific time frame was ruled as a valid OPRA request. Here I am seeking: "email logs with the following fields for information from public records (Electronic Mail System) following fields are: sender, recipient, date, and subject of the emails to the Superintendent of the South Amboy School District from January 1, 2018 through July 31, 2019." As you will note, I asked for a specific document, Email Logs and for a specific time frame, January 1, 2018 through July 31, 2019, therefore this is a very clear, concise, specific and valid OPRA request. As you mention a special service charge, there should be none as I am seeking just the logs and they should only be a few redactions if any within that record. For your convenience, I will shorten my request from Jan 1 2018 to Nov 11 2018
Please send me the government records.
Yours sincerely,
D. Mifflin
D. Mifflin,
Your initial request asked for "email logs." I then asked for
clarification as to what, exactly, you meant by this request since an
"email log" is not a specific form of record maintained by the Board. You
responded by indicating that "emails are being sought" with a new date
range. It now seems you are not seeking "emails" but again seeking "email
logs." You now cite the Paff v. Galloway case. If you review that case,
you will see that the requester specified exactly the fields of the "log"
he was seeking, namely recipient, date and subject, and the time period
covered by his request was much shorter than your request. You have not
specified what information regarding the Superintendent's emails you are
seeking (unlike the requester in Paff), so the Board is unable to provide
you with any information absent further clarification as to what, exactly,
you are seeking. For example, you can request information pertaining to
emails sent by the Superintendent including who emails were sent to, the
subject line and the date, but you must specify this in your request.
Further, a special service charge may still apply depending on how many
responsive emails there are and whether any of the requested information
needs to be redacted. Since the Superintendent's emails often have to do
with student or personnel matters, both of which are confidential
under OPRA, it is likely that extensive redactions will be necessary.
Once you provide sufficient details for the Board to respond to your
request, it will do so.
Thank you,
Peter Frascella
Dear Peter Frascella,
To clarify, I am not seeking emails I am seeking the email logs. I will shorten my request time period again. The time period i am seeking email logs, to contain name of sender, email address of sender, subject and date from January 1, 2019 through January 31, 2019
Yours sincerely,
D. Mifflin
Hello,
As previously noted, the Board does not maintain separate “e-mail logs”
for any of its employees. However, the Board was able to manipulate the
mailbox display to create the attached lists of e-mails received by the
Superintendent for the requested time period (January 1 through 31,
2019). The Board is unable at the current time and with its existing
technology to manipulate the information further to more fully respond to
your request. Accordingly, the Board considers your request to be
fulfilled in accordance with the requirements of OPRA.
The following list identifies the authority for the redactions made
throughout the records being provided to you. “Personnel” stands for
confidential personnel information redacted pursuant to N.J.S.A. 47:1A-10
and “Student” refers to confidential student information redacted pursuant
to N.J.A.C. 6A:32-7.1 et seq.
Page 1 – Personnel
Page 3 - Student
Page 5- Personnel
Page 6 (x2) – Personnel
Page 7 (x2) – Personnel
Page 8 – Personnel
Page 9 (x2) – Personnel
Page 10 (x3) – Student (x2), Personnel
Page 12 – Personnel
Page 13 (x3) – Personnel
Page 14 (x2) - Student
Page 15 (x3) – Personnel (x2), Student
Page 16 – Personnel
Page 17 (x2) - Student
Page 20 – Personnel
Page 22 (x3) – Personnel
Page 23 – Student
Page 24 – Student
Page 26 (x3) – Student (x2), Personnel
Page 27 - Personnel