Schools

Concord School District Sued For Leung Investigation Documents

Update: The ACLU has filed a superior court lawsuit to access to a teacher report after the SAU 8's attorney rejects right-to-know requests.

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An attorney for the Concord School District is citing the "internal personnel practices" exemption in RSA 91-A, the state's right-to-know law, as well as case law to keep from releasing documents to the press and the public.
An attorney for the Concord School District is citing the "internal personnel practices" exemption in RSA 91-A, the state's right-to-know law, as well as case law to keep from releasing documents to the press and the public. (File photos, Tony Schinella | Patch )

CONCORD, NH — A lawsuit has been filed in Merrimack County Superior Court against the Concord School District for access to investigatory documents officials refuse to release about a recent teacher-student rape case. The American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire, on behalf of Dellie Champagne, a city parent, and the Concord Monitor, filed the petition in Merrimack County Superior Court for access to public records under the state's right-to-know law for the "first report" about the Primo "Howie" Leung investigation after requests for the documents were rejected by the district's attorney, Stephen Bennett of Wadleigh, Starr & Peters LLC. Requests for the document were made by Concord NH Patch and the ACLU on Nov. 11 as well as Monitor reporter Leah Willingham on Nov. 12.

All the requests were rejected with Bennett citing the "internal personnel practices" exemption in RSA 91-A, the state's right-to-know law, as well as case law Union Leader Corp. v. Fenniman, 136 N.H. 624, 626 (1993); Hounsell v. North Conway Water Precinct, 154 N.H. 1,4 (2006), and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) law.

In the suit, Gilles Bissonnette of the ACLU argues that the district wrongly was using provisions to keep the public from finding out exactly why some administrators were fired and what exactly happened with the case. The suit stated that information in the report is not protected by FERPA since the identity of students involved in the investigation are redacted. The investigatory information also does not pertain to an "internal personnel practice" as identified under the law. Keeping the report from the public because it has employee information without a "public interest/privacy interest balancing test runs contrary" to the state's open records law and the district and its employees have no privacy or confidentiality interest with respect to their official duties and the public interest in disclosure is compelling.

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Not releasing the report without applying public interest/privacy interest balancing test would be a violation of the state's Constitution, Part 1, Article 8, which requires government to be "open, accessible, accountable and responsive" to "any individual taxpayer."

Bissonnette as well as Richard Gagliuso of Bernstein Shur are in the process of attempting to overturn the sweeping nature of the "internal personnel practice" provision in the New Hampshire Supreme Court this week on behalf of Seacoast Newspapers, concerning documents the city of Portsmouth refuses to release about a fired police officer who inherited millions of dollars from a woman with dementia, and the Union Leader Corporation, which is trying to obtain documents from the town of Salem concerning an audit report of its police department.

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Champagne, in a statement Tuesday, said she felt it necessary to participate in the lawsuit, as a parent, because she believed strongly that the safety of all children is paramount.

"This lawsuit is unequivocally about protecting children and holding adults accountable for their safety," she said. "As families, we put our trust in our schools, and the people who run them. Unfortunately, this trust has been deeply undermined by a small number of Concord School District administrators. This lawsuit allows us to better understand what went wrong so that it may never happen again. It also allows us to hold accountable those who betrayed our trust. Reviewing this report is the first step in allowing this community to heal."

Bennett, Jennifer Patterson, the president of the Concord Board of Education, and Franklyn Bass, the district's interim superintendent, did not return a request for comment at post time.

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