EASTHAMPTON — The deluge of public records requests during the continued saga in the city’s search for a new superintendent had grown so large in recent weeks that it often crashed a software system that handles such queries — a problem city officials hope to avoid in the future by buying a new tracking system.

“When all of this focus came upon the city for the superintendent search … the way we were trying to handle the data, the system would crash. It wouldn’t compress files,” Mayor Nicole LaChapelle said. “We were putting our head up against the wall, because we’ve never gotten that many requests so fast with such long search strings.”

The requests began pouring in after finalist Vito Perrone said the School Committee rescinded his job offer because he used “Ladies” in an email correspondence. In the weeks that have followed, interest in the matter has also amassed into public records requests for any and all correspondence and discussions concerning Perrone.

As municipal employees searched through city records, they found that their digital system could not handle all of the requests and data being queried. LaChapelle said that the IT Department has recently created a tool to prevent the computer programs from crashing, and they’ve also created a link on the municipal website highlighting information collected from the numerous requests and the public records retrieved from those requests.

Among the more frequently requested information are emails containing the term “microaggression” or “ladies.”

One of the other request categories lists all communication to and from the School Committee and other public bodies this year that includes discussion explicitly centered around Perrone. Inside the link are folders to each School Committee members’ email accounts, several of which include letters from the public offering support and oppositions for candidates, multiple requests for comment from media outlets, and feedback from Easthampton teachers, parents and staff in the school district as well as many from outside the city on the committee’s decision to rescind Perrone’s job offer.

In one correspondence, a Westhampton parent requests Chairperson Cynthia Kwiecinski reconsider their decision when it came to Perrone and questioned the message being shown to the children in the district by the leadership of the committee by “eliminating someone from a conversation.”

In an April 1 email, former School Committee member Marissa Carrere posed a concern about the “integrity” of the superintendent search process, and requested that the voting record to rescind the superintendent offer be made public knowledge. As of now, the committee has not approved the March 30 executive session meeting minutes to be released.

“When public deliberations lead to a public vote with a majority selecting a candidate, the public expects that the committee will then negotiate in good faith in service of that vote,” she wrote.

In an April 4 email, Easthampton High School Principal Bill Evans, who served on the superintendent search committee, said he felt as though “his time on the search committee has been devalued” in the way circumstances have evolved, having first been a part of a thorough vetting process.

“To have that come down to the address in an email feels like that time and energy was wasted,” Evans wrote.

Though several emails extended gratitude for the committee’s service to the community with some senders offering so-called solutions to the superintendent search process, several others resorted to name-calling and lunged derogatory statements at committee members.

Dedicated onlinespace to records

Under the state’s Public Records Law, municipalities are required to provide a written response within 10 business days to public records requests. Trying to manage that timeline when a deluge of requests were coming in multiple times each day proved time-consuming.

As of early last week, the city had dedicated 45 hours to the record requests on the superintendent search alone, LaChapelle said. She added that because the requests dealt with the superintendent process, public records searches had to be done for both the municipal and school departments. That work was completed by the city’s IT Department, Barbara LaBombard, city clerk and records access officer, and Lindsi Mailler, executive assistant to the mayor.

“We were pretty lucky that I think most, if not all, records were in a digital format, but you gotta check everywhere where those files might be, including our paper archives,” said LaChapelle.

Once a search produces numerous files, municipal employees then need to determine what qualified as privileged conversation, what was deemed confidential, and what dealt with personnel information.

In fulfilling each public record request, municipal employees also worked to consolidate information so that the same details weren’t repeatedly provided.

“We can do a search and we feel we’ve gotten everything. The question is, what, or if anything, doesn’t belong?” LaChapelle said. “One of the search requests produced 576 pages, so that means making sure no one’s name under 18 or social security number or home address is shown … it’s hours of work.”

More public records requests came in after the Gazette reported that the second superintendent finalist, Erica Faginski-Stark, who accepted the job after the offer to Perrone was rescinded, withdrew her candidacy after students from the Easthampton Gender and Sexuality Alliance club raised concerns about Faginski-Stark’s Facebook posts from 2021 that they said contained “transphobic rhetoric.”

With letters coming from students, LaChapelle said she looped in the city’s attorney to determine what information, such as age, name and other personal information, should be redacted from the public record.

“It’s been a lot of time, and in people hours, it’s been a lot of money,” she said.

Public tracking database

Last week, the City Council approved an interdepartmental transfer of about $2,900 for purchase a public records tracking database.

During the April 19 meeting, Precinct 5 Councilor Dan Rist said that the city would purchase the software to make public records requests easier to find. Rist noted that the Finance Committee, which he serves as chairperson, approved the purchase in a 3-0 vote.

LaBombard said the purchase will fund a basic tracking database system, though the city may consider something more expansive in the future. In addition to start-up costs, the system comes with an annual fee of about $600.

“We’re hoping that this database, which is used by quite a few other clerks that I know, will help make it easier to keep track of what we’re getting in,” said LaBombard. “We’ve been very busy lately and it became obvious that we really kind of needed some help on this.”

Emily Thurlow can be reached at ethurlow@gazettenet.com.]]>