Opinion: I've Given the Port Angeles School District One Last Chance to Follow the Law
On Friday, I sent a formal demand letter to Superintendent Michelle Olsen, Board President Sandy Long, and the district’s public records officer.
It gives the Port Angeles School District a clear choice: start producing the censure records now, or defend a 90-business-day stall tactic in front of a Clallam County Superior Court judge.
I would prefer the records to the litigation. But the district should understand that the clock is now running.
How We Got Here
The timeline is short and damning.
On June 19, the board majority voted 4-1 to censure newly elected Director Nancy Hamilton, reading an eight-page resolution into the public record that identifies, dates, counts, and even quotes the specific documents used to justify the reprimand.
On June 22, I filed a narrowly tailored Public Records Act request for those exact materials: Hamilton’s June 11 email and attached letter, the 17 emails she sent Superintendent Olsen, the superintendent’s written responses, and the correspondence about the anonymous complaints referenced on page 4 of the censure.
On June 29, the district answered with a boilerplate “5-Day Letter” estimating it would need 90 business days—until roughly early November—to “locate and assemble” the records, citing “reduced staff.”
I objected the same day. The district has not responded. Not a revised estimate. Not an installment date. Not a word.
So on July 3, I escalated the matter directly to the district’s leadership, in writing, with deadlines attached.
What the Letter Demands
My letter asks for four things, and none of them is unreasonable.
First: produce the June 11 letter by July 8. This is the single most indefensible piece of the district’s stonewall. Page 4 of the board’s own censure resolution declares Hamilton’s June 11 letter “a public record subject to disclosure by the District in response to a public records request per Chapter 42.56, RCW.”
Read that again. The board formally resolved — in a document its own executive assistant spent nearly 30 minutes reading aloud at a public meeting — that this record is disclosable under the Public Records Act.
Then, when a member of the press actually requested it, the district claimed it would take four and a half months to find.
The district cannot have it both ways.
It cannot brandish a document as a public record when censuring an elected official, then bury that same document behind a bureaucratic wall when a journalist asks to see it.
Second: produce the 17 emails by July 15. The resolution counts them, dates them, and characterizes their contents in detail — down to noting that one email contained 56 separate inquiries across seven attachments.
Nobody writes that sentence without the emails sitting in front of them. These records were located, reviewed, and compiled weeks ago.
Producing a first installment, with any legally required redactions and a proper exemption log, is a matter of days, not months.
Third: a real estimate for the rest. Washington’s Attorney General has told agencies, in the model rules interpreting the PRA, that they should not recycle the same estimate for every request—form estimates issued without regard to what was actually asked for are rarely reasonable.
The district’s five-day letter recited every statutory delay ground in RCW 42.56.520 verbatim, in the disjunctive, without a single fact specific to my request.
If the remaining items genuinely require more time, the district owes the public an individualized, written explanation and committed installment dates.
That is what the law contemplates. That is what I demanded.
Why the District Will Lose in Court
If the district forces this into Clallam County Superior Court, it will walk in carrying the burden of proof. Under RCW 42.56.550(2), the agency—not the requestor—must prove its estimate is reasonable.
What affidavit could the district possibly argue? That it needs until November to “locate” records its board just quoted in a public resolution?
Washington’s appellate courts have already answered the “reduced staff” excuse, repeatedly. Zink v. City of Mesa established that administrative inconvenience does not excuse strict compliance with the PRA.
In Cantu v. Yakima School District, the Court of Appeals held that an agency cannot excuse a lack of diligence by pointing to thin staffing or the difficulty of producing records — and went on to hold that a $10-per-day penalty against that school district was inadequate as a matter of law.
Just two years ago, Division One rejected the same staffing defense from the Bellevue School District.
And the financial exposure is real. A prevailing requestor is entitled to all costs and reasonable attorney fees, plus penalties of up to $100 per day per record, weighed under the sixteen Yousoufian factors—factors that treat a clear request, obvious public importance, time-sensitivity for the press, and an unreasonable agency explanation as aggravators. Every one of those aggravators is present here.
The state Supreme Court has affirmed a penalty north of half a million dollars for dilatory production.
Every day the district delays, it is not protecting itself. It is running up a tab that Port Angeles taxpayers—the same taxpayers whose kids just absorbed a Reduction in Force—will ultimately pay.
The Real Question
Strip away the statutes and the case citations, and this dispute comes down to something simpler.
The board majority was willing to move with remarkable speed when the goal was condemning a colleague.
The eight-page resolution came together in weeks. The records were gathered, reviewed, quoted, and read aloud to a packed room at the Lincoln Center.
But when the public asks to see those same records—to check the board’s work, to evaluate whether the censure of an elected official was justified—suddenly the district is understaffed, overwhelmed, and needs until November.
Transparency that operates only in one direction is not transparency. It is narrative control.
The district has until July 8 to produce the record its own board declared public, and until July 15 to produce the first installment of the rest.
If those deadlines pass in silence, I will file in Clallam County Superior Court, where the district will have to explain its 90-day wall to a judge—under a burden of proof it cannot carry.
The choice is theirs. The deadline is not.