By email:
[email address]
03 April 2023
Dear requester,
Reconsidering our initial response to your first request and your subsequent information request.
1. We refer to your email correspondence of 26 March, 12.01am to the presiding member of St
Patrick’s School Board, and for ease include our response to your second request made under
the Official Information Act 1982 (
Act), received 26 March 11pm in the principal’s inbox.
2. In your first email correspondence on 26 March, you ask for us to point out "exactly" where
you can find our policy information, express that the online link provided doesn’t work and
that the information does not meet your expectations of receipt.
3. You express dissatisfaction with the board’s response, in that you point out the in-committee
minutes, “information not written down” and concerns and complaints are subject to a
request made under the Act. You would like us to release this information, redacting if
necessary.
4. In our understanding of the Act, we agree that such information can be requested. The Board
remain seriously concerned in respect of any release of information to you as it does not know
who it may be releasing the information to. Your assumption that we accept you are a citizen
by releasing our complaints register for the time requested is not an acceptance, rather a
release of information that is publicly available within the scope of your request.
5. The Office of the Ombudsman suggests that a requester can provide assurance of their
citizenship privately to a staff member. You are therefore welcome to contact the presiding
member directly using the email you already have with the evidence providing such assurance.
6. Furthermore, we disagree with your opinion that the use of a “FYI” email address is irrelevant.
We reiterate that by using this address the contents of this letter including any information
released will be immediately and permanently catapulted into the public arena. It is also the
reason why the Board choose not to use your name in our response to you as we are
concerned for your own privacy interests on such a public website.
7. The Board received an additional request from you for information on the 26 March 2023 at
11pm. In this email you state your belief that the requested information is of public interest
because it relates to the maintenance of the integration agreement between the State and a
Catholic School, and the interest to “local Catholics who want to support the education of
Catholic students in their region.”
8. You ask for the position descriptions and person specifications at the time of employment for
the positions of principal, deputy principal(s) and the Director of Religious Studies (DRS) for St
Patrick’s Catholic School, Te Awamutu.
9. Under the Act you request board meeting minutes for Jan-March 2023, including any special
board meetings in 2023 and information written or otherwise of any subcommittees or
“working groups” established in response to community complaints since November 2022.
10. You request any school policies relating to staff or board members who are in a reporting
relationship.
11. You also request information under the Act of the board’s policies or practices when an
employee doesn’t meet the special character requirement of their position, specifically by an
employee’s commitment to a same-sex marriage or relationship. You seek what steps the
board would take addressing a teacher in this scenario.
12. You would also like to know whether there have been any situations in the last six months
when the board have enacted the policies and procedures you request information on around
employees in same-sex relationships and upholding special character.
13. The release of information to a person who the board has no visibility of, alongside the
immediate release of any information into the public arena, are factors the board has given
weight to in its decision-making process.
14. To factor into our consideration of your requests is that the board’s complaints policy sets the
expectations for any complainants that their concerns or complaints will be “treated in a
highly confidential manner”. We also consider the board’s responsibility as employers to
maintain and support good working relationships with our employees, who have a right to
have any employment matters kept confidential. These factors weigh heavily on us in our
decision-making process.
15. The board look at your current request (26 March, 11pm) and reconsider the response to your
original request (17 February) under the principle of availability in section 5 of the Official
Information Act (
Act). We use the guides of the Ombudsman’s office to assist us in considering
your request, including looking at how we can release confidential information and the public
interest worksheet in determining the level of public interest against the need to withhold
private information.
Decision:
16. In accordance with the Official Information Act 1982, the board have approached your
requests under the principal of availability and then given due consideration as to whether
there would be good reason to withhold it. The Board sets out its decision as follows:
a)
School Policies: We consider a link to a publicly available website to be adequate and
in electronic form. We provide information in
Appendix A to help you.
b) The Board has reviewed your request considering your expressed dissatisfaction with
our response to your request dated 17 February. Other than the information provided
in
this
letter,
the
Board
uphold
their
previous
response.
c)
The public interest: We have assessed the relative strengths of the privacy interest
and the public interest in release and consider the public interest in release of
information concerning complaints and in committee information does not outweigh
the need to withhold this information to protect the privacy of natural persons under
section 9(2)(a) of the Act.
We believe the publicly available process for any family to visit the school through
first contacting the school/principal, is an acceptable process that gives each family
the freedom to assess for themselves whether the school is right for their child’s
educational needs and requirements, including in relation to Catholic special
character.
The school itself is subject to a Special Character Review that is a thorough and regular
process conducted by a team from the Diocese. The process and outcome are
transparent, culminating in a report that is publicly available.
d)
Position descriptions at time of appointment: for the DRS, Principal and Deputy
Principals. Please find the documents provided in the application pack at the time of
their appointments in
Annex A with redactions. The redactions are names of
individuals or schools irrelevant to your request, ie, they are not staff, complainants,
or our school. Please note, these documents may not meet your expectations of the
information you are after but rightly or wrongly, they were the documents used at
the time.
e)
Board minutes: Board meetings and any subcommittee minutes from January,
February, and March 2023:
i. Our board meeting minutes are uploaded to our website after they have been
approved as a true and correct record in the subsequent board meeting. Our
1st March meeting minutes are now available on the school website.
https://www.stpatta.co.nz/about-us/our-school-board
ii.
Board in-committee meeting minutes: the Board has searched its records
from within the last eight months and is withholding the information as it
considers it is necessary to protect the privacy of natural persons under
section 9(2)(a) of the Act. The Board considers the need to protect the privacy
and privacy interests of its employees and any complainants outweighs the
public
interest
in
disclosure
of
the
information.
f)
Board subcommittee minutes/briefs/notes/reports etc: All subcommittee
(
committee) reports/information (public or public-excluded) within the dates you
request are presented as attached documents of the board meeting (for example the
Property Report). There is no separate process. If there is a specific report of the
public meeting you would like to see, please indicate by referencing the meeting date
of the minutes it was tabled in.
We withhold any information held in the public-excluded business (in-committee)
during board meetings as per our decision in 16(e)(ii).
g)
In relation to the above, any information not written down: As the request is in
relation to in-committee (public-excluded) information, the board would likely
withhold to protect the privacy of natural persons under 9(2)(a). Even to provide this
material the Board would need to create information which would require the
application of complex skill, judgement or interpretation and board members with
reliable and working memory. If the Board was required to create this information, it
would comprise substantial collation as contemplated by s18(f).
h)
School or Board policies in respect of relationships: between staff or board members
who are in a reporting relationship.
i. The Board has made copies of its policies available on the school website and
has previously provided you with a link to the documents.
ii. The Board is currently working on a conflicts of interest policy for staff, which
may relate to your request for information. This will be uploaded on our
website when it is in final form and approved by the Board, expected by
middle of term 2.
i)
Board’s policies or practices when an employee doesn’t uphold special character by
having an alignment to a same-sex marriage/relationship, and what steps the board
would
take
in
addressing
such
matters
with
a
teacher:
i. This request makes a specific assumption of special character that may be
better addressed by the Church as guided by our Pope.
ii. The board/school has nothing specific to the information requested and
therefore under section 18(e) of the Act refuses namely because the
document(s) requested do not exist.
iii. For any concern raised in relation to an employee, the board would generally
seek advice in the first instance from New Zealand School Trustees
Association and follow its Complaints Policy.
j)
Any situations in the last 6 months where the board have enacted these
policies/procedures: The policies/procedures you are referencing don’t exist. The
board and principal have followed their general policy directions over the last six
months on many board matters, including their complaints policy.
You have the right to seek an investigation and review by the Ombudsman of this decision.
Information about how to make a complaint is available at www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or
freephone 0800 802 602.
Yours sincerely,
St Patrick’s Catholic School Board
Appendix A.
Accessing school policies:
We attach again for you the link to our policies:
https://www.stpatta.co.nz/school-
information/policies. We have checked this link and it works however, you might find it easier to copy and paste the link
directly into your browser.
1. The link will lead to this page:
2. Click on “here”, which will then take you to this page, select the dropdown menu in the
right-hand corner labelled “Home”. All policies sit under this menu.
3. We have checked the provided link in this letter, checked each of the above steps through
different users and browsers and confirm that our policies are accessible this way. An
alternative method for accessing them is to go through the front page of our website:
https://www.stpatta.co.nz/home, (you can type this straight into your browser), select the
dropdown tab “School Information”, then select “Policies”.
