School Districts, State and Local Government, Right To Know

Office of Open Records Holds That Certain Records of a Booster Group Are Not Records of the School District

Tucker Arensberg, P.C. on 6/18/2025

Lowry v. Rose Tree Media School District, AP 2024-2478 (Dec. 5, 2024). The Office of Open Records holds that registration forms for a cross-country meet that was organized and run by a booster group on school district...more

Commonwealth Court Holds that the Failure to Identify a Transaction or Activity of an Agency in a Request for Records Under the...

Tucker Arensberg, P.C. on 6/17/2022

Methacton Sch. Dist. v. Off. of Open Records of Cmmw., 250 C.D. 2021, 2021 WL 6122163, at *1 (Pa. Cmmw. Dec. 28, 2021). The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania holds that a request for the emails of four individuals over a...more

OOR Begrudgingly Recognizes the Broad Scope of Act 22

Tucker Arensberg, P.C. on 3/2/2020

In Bradley v. Lehighton Area School District, AP 2019-2068 (Jan. 13, 2019), the OOR confirmed that the scope of videos covered by Act 22 (and, therefore, beyond the reach of the RTKL) is significantly broader than many...more

OOR Determines that Emails from Members of the Public to an Agency are Records “of” the Agency

Tucker Arensberg, P.C. on 9/24/2019

In Ruland v. Southern York County School District, AP 2019-0567 (Aug. 8, 2019), the OOR concluded that, in certain circumstances, emails from community members to an agency can be public records. In this case, the...more

Statements of Financial Interest Cannot be Redacted (Section 306; Ethics Act)

Tucker Arensberg, P.C. on 5/21/2019

In Guydish v. Crestwood School District, AP 2019-0643, the requester sought copies of the statements of financial interests filed by the school district’s current school board members pursuant to the Public Official and...more

Requesters Can Submit RTKL Requests for Records that they Already Possess Because the Identity and Motivation of the Requester is...

Tucker Arensberg, P.C. on 4/29/2019

In the previous post we discussed how a “common sense” reason for denying a request (e.g., the requested records are subject to a pending RTKL appeal), was rejected by the OOR because that reason was not supported by the...more