The ruling, while narrow, also endorsed the district’s unusual decision last year to sue the newspaper rather than respond to its public records request.
The case began in 2018 after the newspaper sought details of former Burlington Tech interim director Adam Provost’s departure in January of that year for unspecified medical reasons. Provost had been on administrative leave for months before he resigned.
A Seven Days reporter asked the school district to provide any separation agreement involving Provost. The district believed the document was public under state law but said that Provost promised to sue unless certain details were withheld.
So the district drew up the legal equivalent of a football punt. Instead of responding to the newspaper’s records request, it filed a lawsuit asking a judge to decide what it was obligated to release. The filing, known as a request for declaratory judgment, named Provost and Seven Days as defendants.
The move led to costly, drawn-out litigation for the newspaper over what news editor Matthew Roy characterized as a routine request. “We filed a records request, which we do all the time as the usual course of business,” he said Friday. “This was just an inquisitive reporter doing her job.”
A Superior Court judge ordered the records released in October 2018 after Provost missed a filing deadline. Provost appealed to the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in May.
The court also opined that the school district’s legal maneuver was “entirely appropriate” under the circumstance where it was caught between public records law and threatened litigation by a former employee.
“I think we’re pleased with the result in this particular case, but if that became a common tactic, it would not bode well for the news media,” Seven Days attorney Thomas Little said.
Seven Days previously filed a counterclaim in the lower court seeking to have the school district pay the newspaper’s legal fees, which totaled more than $7,500. Judge Helen Toor denied that claim.
“I think it would have a custodian [of records] think twice before going down that path,” Little said.
But Seven Days did not press its demand for attorney’s fees to the high court, so justices chose not to address the issue, they wrote.
Little said he had not yet determined whether his client could continue to pursue attorney’s fees with the lower court.
Attorneys for both the Burlington School District and Provost declined comment Friday.
Read the order here:
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The Burlington School District became a pathetic joke with the hire of Yaw Obeng as Superintendent. Hoping 7 Days will do some digging and uncover the REAL reason Obeng suddenly decide to depart.
This provost case is clearly a cover up. Looking forward to read about the details. The guidance director doctoring transcripts and hitting on Para Educators, most expensive super in history, test scores plummeting, etc, etc, ETC! . Now the “Mid Atlantic Equity Center” is coming to Burlington to teach equity!! How many millions has the district spent on “equity”? They spend millions on this already, with nothing to show except a bunch of do-nothings (all equity employees), drawing big salaries and benefits, never working with kids and crying “racism!” because without the cries, no jobs. Apparently they aren’t doing what they were hired to do because, Burlington just isn’t “woke” enough. Here comes another company, more training and MORE money spent on ………….equity. This record is broken and so is this school district. This is why the public school budget in Vermont is increasing while enrollment drops. Millions wasted on “trainings” and new “initiatives”. Dump the diversity departments, develop a back bone and deal with issues on a case by case basis. Time to cut non-essential staffing and consultants and get back to basics.
Dont throw the baby out with the bathwater. While I agree the school district should provide the information requested by Seven Days, I disagree that the school district or Seven Days acted inappropriately. The elegance of our American Constitutional Republic is that it provides checks and balances between disagreeing parties. For truly controversial issues, the judicial process requires more time than it otherwise might. This is a good thing, equivalent to the axiom of counting to ten before impulsively taking an expedient action, thereby decreasing the likelihood of a decision detrimental to everyone. The fact that the process was expensive is a reflection on the current structure of our politicized and dysfunctional public-school monopoly, not the judicial system in which everyone has the right to exercise due process on their own behalf.
I look forward to seeing the details of the school district methodology.
When’s the vote for new school board members?