Title IX Reports to Be Made Public

Jennifer Shiao’s School Committee Blog

Editor’s note: . Jennifer Shiao is a member of the Amherst School Committee. Her original posts can be found here.  An archive of her blog posts in The Indy can be found here.

At tonight’s (11/14/23) Regional School Committee (RSC) meeting, Interim Superintendent Doug Slaughter stated that redacted versions of the three Title IX investigation reports and two other investigation reports will be made public.

According to Slaughter, more than one individual had submitted a public records request to the district requesting the reports. The district declined to fulfill the request, due to the information being personnel matters and thus confidential. One individual (called the “petitioner”) then appealed the decision to the Secretary of State’s office. The Secretary of State’s determination was that the reports are considered public record, and should be made public with appropriate redactions.

According to Union 26 Chair Irv Rhodes, the names of students and the names of witnesses will be redacted.

Slaughter informed the RSC that tomorrow (11/15/23) is the deadline for delivering the redacted reports to the petitioner, and once that happens they will be public documents.

The RSC then voted unanimously to instruct the superintendent to publish the redacted reports to the RSC’s Boarddocs site (a public-facing website used for meetings, agendas, and documents), and add a link to the reports to the ARPS website.

You can watch this portion of the meeting on Amherst Media’s YouTube page, starting at around 1:10:30: 

I will publish a blog update when the reports have been posted publicly.

This blog reflects my own views about the Amherst and Amherst-Pelham Regional School Committees – it does not represent the view of the committees, the district, or the superintendent. This blog complies with Open Meeting Law, as long as a quorum of School Committee members do not engage in deliberations in the comments. Comments are welcome. I may respond to comments, but I will not respond to all comments. Sign up here using the “follow blog via email” form to be notified when I post a new entry.  You can email me at jennifer@jenniferamherst.org.