City illegally hides homeless student records: suit

The city Department of Education has illegally withheld public records on homeless students — after stalling on requests for more than a year, a lawsuit alleges.

The Partnership for the Homeless, an advocacy organization that serves people affected by homelessness, including those who leave shelters, sued the agency late Tuesday.

The partnership alleges the DOE hasn't turned over information that should have been provided under the Freedom of Information Law. The Education Department didn't disclose all the information requested on which schools homeless kids attend, for example.

Officials also didn't share all the requested information on how those students get to class, or the department's presence in shelter-intake centers, the court papers charge.

“At the same time, the DOE has provided no credible explanation for why the requested records are unavailable, instead baldly claiming that various FOIL exemptions apply to the requests, such as that providing the information would require the creation of ‘new' records,” court papers state.

The DOE also refused to release some records on the grounds that doing so might violate federal privacy law, advocates contend.

The DOE has been under fire for years for failing to comply with open records laws. Officials failed to respond to more than 500 records requests between March 3, 2014, and Aug. 25, 2017, according to the education blog The 74.

Neither the DOE nor the city Law Department responded to requests for comment.