This is FU

In November 2011 we requested from Tewksbury, the application, cover letters, resume, letters of recommendation, etc for Purnima Demorais who suddenly and mid-year, left her job as Principal of Harmony Grove, after just a couple years, and after reportedly being under investigation by Framingham Public Schools HR. They responded with a document which was essentially one big redaction, including dates on emails… WHO REDACTS DATES?

Their writing explained why they redacted all the important stuff. It also described why they outright withheld the cover letter, letter of recommendation, and email correspondence between Demorais and the Tewksbury School District.

We appealed the matter to the state, and won, and on January 28, 2022, we received a mostly unredacted response, except for a letter of recommendation. This was one of the letters of recommendation released to us.

We decided to not go back to the state and appeal the letter of recommendation redaction, instead we made our request to the City of Framingham. We filed our request on January 28, 2022, requesting:

Seeking the letter of recommendation written by Amy Bright, written on city letterhead on behalf of Purnima DeMorais and dated September 7th 2021. To aid you in locating the letter, the letter began, “To Whom it may concern, I have known Md. Purnmia DeMoaris since 2018 when I began my role as director of elementary education…“

The city took a few days and decided to respond to us with an outright denial:

The document you requested is confidential personnel information, exempt from disclosure under exemption (c) of G.L. c. 4, s. 7, cl. 26th. Such records are shielded from disclosure by Wakefield Teacher’s Ass’n v. School Comm. of Wakefield, 431 Mass. 792, 798 (2000). Accordingly, compiling a response to your request will require a careful review of these documents and segregation/ redaction of exempt information within the invoices by counsel. You have a right to appeal this response to the Supervisor of Public Records pursuant to G.L. c. 66, s. 10A(a) or by filing an action in Superior Court pursuant to G.L. c. 66, s. 10A(c).

Did you notice that in the denial. The city stated that compiling a 2 page document will require a careful review of these documents and segregation and redaction by legal counsel.

We appealed to the state asking them to overturn the denial, stating that the city chose to withhold in its entirety a document only 2 pages long, instead of redact portions it felt should be protected. We won that appeal and on February 18, 2022, we obtained a glowing letter of recommendation written by Amy Bright.

So you may have noticed that this letter of recommendation is three pages long, while the one Tewksbury had on file was only two pages long. You may also notice the date of the one Tewksbury had in its records as being from September 7th, 2021 while this one is dated October 28th, 2021. It was reported mid October that Demorais has accepted the job at Tewksbury, and her first day on the job would be November 1st, 2021. We filed again with the city an appeal stating that this is not the correct document, requesting the one dated September 7th, 2021.

This brings up questions…

Why if Demorais has gotten the job at Tewksbury to start 11/1/2021, was a letter of recommendation written on 10/28/201?

Was this letter created by the city to respond to our FOIA request?

It looks like Amy Bright thinks very highly of Demorais, which contradicts the reporting that we have gotten about Demorais. Is it possible that Bright, does think highly of Demorais? Or did Bright lie, to expedite Demorais’s departure? Of course we still have no idea what was in the letter sent to Tewksbury on September 7th, 2021.

If Bright did lie in her letter? If so, won’t this hurt the schools that Demorais works in the future, if reused?

We had hoped to wrap this all up already, but with the wrong letter being sent to us…. we press on and will have to update our findings when we are presented what we requested from the city in the first place.