Finally a response from OSPI - 2 days late and only after prodding

Dear Mr. Dempsey,

My greatest apologies in the delay with the timeline. I certainly respect the timeframe you face and will continue to work with the program office and the agency to provide these documents as quickly as possible.

As previously communicated, due to the heavy workload by the program office, they required time to adequately determine the resources available to meet your request. Due their workload and staff commitments in May and June, plus the critical deadlines associated with the math trainings and events, the program office needs to use a phased approach to provide you with documents responsive to your request. A timeline for response is provided below. In the event that it is possible for documents to be prepared and made available at an earlier time we will notify you of such changes to the timeline.

Request # 08-0100 Timeline:

1. Instructional Materials Review (IMR) and Professional Development (PD) facilitator applications – July 18, 2008

2. The rating criteria – June 13, 2008

3. Scores sheets for IMR and PD facilitator applications – July 18, 2008

4. The final list of IMR and PD facilitator members:

a. K-8 core IMR team – June 25, 2008

b. K-8 PD facilitators – June 13, 2008

c. K-8 supplemental IMR team – TBD (OSPI has not yet scheduled the review event to invite and received acceptance of attendance from identified members)

d. Grades 9-12 core IMR team – TBD (OSPI has not yet scheduled the review event to invite and received acceptance of attendance from identified members)

e. Grades 9-12 supplemental IMR team – TBD (OSPI has not yet scheduled the review event to invite and received acceptance of attendance from identified members)

f. Grades 9-12 PD facilitators – (OSPI has not yet scheduled the training event to invite and received acceptance of attendance from identified members)

5. RFP/RFQ for math curriculum adoption process (Work Request #19352) – June 13, 2008

6. Responses/bids from Work Request #19352 – June 13, 2008

7. Contract between OSPI and successful bidder to Work Request #19352 – June 13, 2008

a. Deliverables will be considered final upon completion of the contract performance period.

8. If additional costs of services are necessary for the performance of the contractor for the facilitation of the math curriculum adoption, OSPI will address such costs within an amendment to the contract.

In response to your interest about the 22 members of the “IMR criteria panel” and question of public notification about the April 25th meeting of this group, OSPI chose to involve input from individuals identified given their curriculum-level roles within school districts and their experience leading/participating in instructional materials reviews and/or mathematics adoptions processes. This group is working with OSPI to develop the review instrument and criteria, and are not the group that will participate in the review of materials.

Subsequent to the April 25th meeting, the review instrument and criteria were shared with the State Board of Education (SBE) Math Panel members, from which the input provided was considered as representative of that from public citizens.

The IMR Advisory has met one more time to review the input from the SBE Math Panel and to finalize their recommendations on the review instrument/criteria. This meeting occurred on May 21st. OSPI will be sending the second draft of the review instrument/criteria to Edie Harding in the SBE to be shared with the SBE Math Panel members for final input prior to the IMR for K-8 core mathematic materials which is scheduled in June 2008.

To view the documents at the agency, I will need to make arrangements for a staff member to be available and a conference room. Please let me know if there is a specific date and time that will work with your schedule.

Again, the program office and the agency continue to work diligently to address your request as quickly as possible. If the time table can be moved forward for any of these items above, I will let you know immediately.

Sincerely,

Susan Wilson

Public Disclosure Officer
Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction
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My response follows
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Ms. Wilson, 5-29-2008

Thanks for the reply and the apology. The response was two days beyond the requirements of the RCW that pertains to the need for prompt responses.

Dates of July 18 are unacceptable as my complaint against your agency goes to court in July.

Why not June 18th?

I do not care about who chooses to accept invitations to join the IMR team at this time. That can be sent in July.

What I require for the prosecution of my Complaint and request for injunctive relief from OSPI and SBE actions are the the applications the scores and the rubrics.

This has clearly already taken place. I need these documents as soon as possible. Why do you believe it will take OSPI until July 18th to provide documents that are already in existence? If this was a priority, I find it hard to believe this could take more than a week. Your time-line at this point is that I need to wait 7 weeks.

Please explain how your agency that employs I suspect hundreds is unable to provide me with this simple information in less than 7 weeks and yet I as an individual will have only 7 days to refine my court case against your agency through the use of these documents.

Let me again remind you that my contention has been that the reduction in the maximum time-line as specified by the legislature was done by your agency and SBE, in fact I testified against this reduction in time at the public hearing.

Now again it appears because OSPI shortened the time-line OSPI is in too big a hurry to accommodate the Law -- (busy 2 days late on the FOIA time-line response) -- busy can not deliver documents already in OSPI possession for 7 weeks.

NOT ACCEPTABLE.

Either give me the documents substantially sooner and a date in June - early June or give me a much better explanation that you believe will stand up in court, as to why my freedom to information is being impeded by your agency.

Sincerely,

Danaher M. Dempsey, Jr.