Metro

DOE stalls for a year without answering FOIL request on librarians

When it comes to the Department of Education, there’s no such thing as a routine Freedom of Information Law request.

Diane Tinsley of Community Education Council 5 in Harlem submitted what she thought was a minor FOIL application to the DOE in April 2016. Concerned by a severe shortage of school librarians, the CEC — representing the Harlem Council of Elders advocacy group — simply wanted to know which of the 16 schools in her district staffed them.

But instead of getting answers, Tinsley found herself trapped in a bureaucratic farce that has lasted for well over a year. The DOE rejected her request two months after she filed it, arguing that it would require the mass mobilization of its tech department.

“A compilation of the requested data does not exist, and responding to your request would involve more than a simple extraction of data from a single computer storage system,” explained DOE FOIL officer Joseph Baranello in a June 2016 rejection letter.

“Rather, it would require matching records across multiple computer storage systems, and would require extensive programming and other compilation that would require more than reasonable effort,” Baranello argued.

“FOIL does not obligate a public agency such as the DOE to match data across computer storage systems in order to respond to a FOIL request,” Baranello wrote. “Nor does it require more than ‘reasonable effort’ in order to respond to a request for data. As such, your request is denied.”

“I couldn’t believe it,” Tinsley said, speculating that the DOE could have solved the riddle with a single e-mail blast to principals. “It was disrespectful, it was dismissive. It was insulting to me that the DOE thought they would say that to me and that would be the end of it.”

She ripped the DOE’s denial premise as “unacceptable” in an appeal of the decision.

“I am certain Mayor de Blasio, Chancellor Fariña and many others would be embarrassed and shocked to know that Community Education Council 5 and parents of public school students are being denied on such illogical, indefensible grounds,” Tinsley wrote.

She won her appeal in August 2016 — but has since received 10 consecutive monthly extension letters from the DOE. After more than a year, her request remains unfulfilled.

“We won the appeal and they put us back into their delay cycle,” she said. “I can paper my house with these letters at this point. It’s like they’re saying: Fine, you won, but by the time we give you the information — if we give it to you — you won’t even be around anymore to do anything about it.”

Asked about the FOIL request by The Post Tuesday, a DOE spokesman said Tinsley would get her answers by the end of the week.