Court Orders RIH BOE to Release Private Emails—What Were Board Members Hiding Before the January 2023 ReOrg Vote?
- Kathie Schwartz
- Jan 30
- 3 min read
Updated: Feb 25
Original Post January 30, 2025 at 7:48am:
New court ruling:
"Board of Education trustees at the Ramapo Indian Hills High School District must turn over email logs from their personal computers to satisfy a citizen’s request made under the Open Public Records Act, an appellate court has ruled.
The appellate court said private emails between trustees in which they discussed school board business were public records, and subject to inspection under OPRA."
This case was brought by Alex Rosetti in January 2023. "Rosetti suspected that trustees were discussing school board matters through private email exchanges, and he wanted to know more. The district initially supplied only the email logs from its public server, arguing that private emails were off-limits to the public."
Rosetti won the case and RIH BOE trustees must supply emails from their personal email boxes.
Update January 30, 2025 at 11:45am:
As a follow up to my earlier post, attached is the court decision in the Rossetti case.
From the court opinion: "After reviewing the Board members' email logs from the Board's servers, Rosetti submitted a certification to the trial court attesting: "[I]n the log that was supplied there are dozens of redactions demonstrating Board members using their District-supplied email accounts to communicate with other Board members['] personal email accounts and even sending information to their own personal accounts." To further support his request, Rosetti cited to "a newspaper article detailing the intricate, involved and expansive agenda the [Board] was able to vote upon without any significant discussion at its reorganization meeting." He thus reasoned "that communications regarding Board business are taking place outside the realm of the District[-] controlled email accounts."
I believe Mr. Rossetti is referring to the January 2023 ReOrg meeting, in which Judy Sullivan's board majority walked in a series of coordinated motions, which appeared to be collusion in violation of the Open Public Meetings Act.
Judy Sullivan was the Board President and Kim Ansh was the Board VP while this case was with the Superior Court. It was under their leadership that the decision was made to fight this appeal that the district lost.
The question we should all have, is why was board business being forwarded to personal email accounts, and what were Judy, Kim and their Board majority trying to hide?
Time will tell.
Update February 3, 2025:
Today's article on north jersey. com regarding the recent OPRA decision:
"The ruling said Rosetti's interest was piqued by the "intricate, involved and expansive agenda the board was able to vote upon without any significant discussion" at the Jan. 5, 2023, reorganization meeting.
During that meeting, three newly elected and sworn trustees joined two incumbents in reading and voting on at least 12 walk-in motions on a variety of subjects, including refusal to approve two of the superintendent's student disciplinary recommendations.
Rosetti concluded that "communications regarding board business are taking place outside the realm of the district-controlled email account," the ruling said. Rosetti then filed a records request for "email logs of all past and current board members for all email accounts in which they have conducted or discussed Board of Education matters or business" from Nov. 1, 2022, through January 2023."
District Statement Posted to the RIH Website:
