The DC Public Charter School Board has released its revised school transparency policy ahead of tonight’s monthly meeting, and absent are two highly controversial provisions that many have insisted need to be included. While the document does add additional requirements for information that schools must include on their websites, such as the salaries of the five top earning officials if they make over one hundred thousand a year, there is no rule that charters must adhere to open meeting laws or have to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests. This is going to make a lot of people angry.

The proposed policy does include this language around informing the public regarding the ability to participate in individual charter school board meetings:

“While DC PCSB does not prescribe a particular open meetings policy, schools will be required to develop a policy pertaining to board meeting accessibility. This policy shall include the number of open meetings the school plans to hold per year.”

Regarding the call for charters to be required to fulfill Freedom of Information Act requests, the board rejected this suggestion. It commented:

“DC PCSB does not support this largely because staff burden in answering FOIA requests may impede on schools’ academic programs. As an independent government agency, DC PCSB is subject to FOIA, which means that the public may access all documents submitted to DC PCSB by schools. Items that are often requested from DC PCSB via FOIA have been added to the policy and will be posted on school websites (e.g. school budgets, board meeting nibutes). “

The board is exactly following my recommendations on these topics.

The supporting documentation for tonight’s session states that during the PCSB’s January meeting ten people testified in favor of having schools comply with open meeting laws and nine added their support for charters having to answer FOIA submissions.

Expect fireworks to fly later today as the board is also considering the move by Cesar Chavez PCS to close a middle and high school campus.