Letters Pleading for Price Lab Appear to Have Been Withheld From Regents
It's possible dozens of emails meant for the Board of Regents never reached the decision-makers.
Dozens of emails written by the public and aimed at the Iowa Board of Regents prior to the closing of Malcolm Price Laboratory School apparently never reached their intended targets.
The emails — almost exclusively pleas from people to keep Price Lab open —were sent in the days following an announcement by University of Northern Iowa President Ben Allen that he intended to close the school. The emails were sent, however, prior to a vote by the regents on whether to go through with the closure.
Those pleas, it appears based on records obtained by Patch under Iowa's open records law, never made it to the regents prior to their Feb. 27 decision to close Price Lab.
Instead, the regents’ executive director, Bob Donley, instructed his staff not to forward at least one letter, and many others apparently never made it past his inbox prior to the vote.
One example: The board’s communications director, Shelia Doyle Koppin, forwarded an email to Donley on behalf of a Price Lab employee urging the regents to hold off on a vote and take more time to consider the matter. The letter was clearly intended for the full board.
"Bob - Should I forward to Regents?" Koppin asks in a note to Donley.
The one word reply from Donley: "NO."
"Thanks. I did not," Koppin responded.
While that email is the only one Donley explicitly decided to keep from the regents, other documents indicate that dozens of letters were never forwarded by his staff.
In one email, dated Feb. 25, Regents Policy and Operations Officer Marcia Brunson tells Donley, "I have received 50 or so inquiries relating to the closure of the Price Lab School. Should they be shared with the board prior to the meeting on Monday?"
A review of the emails Patch obtained shows no response from Donley and no indication that the inquiries were shared with the board.
A day earlier, Brunson had sent a similar email with the subject line, "I have received 40 inquiries as Price Lab school," with no text in the body of the email.
Again, the records show no response from Donley.
One emailer asks “Regents Members” to challenge Allen during a scheduled phone call about the closing.
"Let your call today simply serve to create an opportunity to ask some important questions before reaching a conclusion," the email said. The author’s name was redacted from the email before it was handed over to Patch.
Again, the records show no signs that the message was forwarded to the regents.
When asked via email and later on Monday during a phone conversation for comment, the regents, through Koppin, did not respond.
To be sure, the regents did receive some feedback. At least five messages that were obtained in the records request were emailed to all of the board members, and no doubt many more were also received that were not covered by the records request.
But many of them, according to a review of the requested records, never made it to the regents despite clearly being intended to be shared.
The open records request filed by Cedar Falls Patch sought email correspondences about Price Lab sent to or from Donley, Regents President Craig Lang and Regents President Pro Tem Bruce Rastetter.
"Attached is my letter to you and the Board of Regents in support of keeping Price Lab open," one message addressed to Donley reads. "Please accept my support and read through my letter. I have tried to keep emotions out of this letter because I understand that with business matters there can be no emotions attached. Thank you!"
For comprehensive coverage of the UNI budget cuts, including the planned closure of Price Lab, visit the Cedar Falls Patch topic page. Get notified of the latest on Price Lab and other UNI news by signing up to the Cedar Falls Patch newsletter, and "like" Cedar Falls Patch on Facebook to stay updated and join the conversation.
In This article
-
University of Northern Iowa
1227 W 27th St, Cedar Falls, IA -
Price Lab School/Northern University High School
W 19th St & Campus St, Cedar Falls, IA
Deb Belt
8:49 am on Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Excellent reporting. Surely an institution as near and dear to Iowans as the Malcolm Price Lab School deserves a thorough hearing of all views. If emails were not forwarded to the Regents, they should ask why.
Alison Gowans
12:10 pm on Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Did any readers send letters?
Steve Wilson
12:51 pm on Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Did they see or get sent the petition at change.org?
It is obvious that keeping the school open was not even being discussed.
Stephen Schmidt
12:58 pm on Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Do you have any idea how many letters were withheld versus the number that did make it to the regents?
Alison Gowans
1:07 pm on Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Stephen - We only have access to the emails that were released to us via the open records request, which included Regents President Lang and Regent Rastetter. They received five emails that were sent to all the regents and did not go through Donley's office. We have 20 emails that were sent to Donley but apparently were not forwarded. But we have no way of knowing how many letters the other regents received.
Sally
6:42 pm on Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Alison,
I contacted the BOR prior to the MPLS decision and also again last week regarding the departmental cuts but, I contacted each member individually, so it did not go to just one office/clearing.
Adam Butler
8:16 pm on Tuesday, March 20, 2012
I sent the following email which does not mention Price Lab by name and, therefore, probably would not have turned up in an open records request. However, I did receive a notice from Regent Mulholland that the email was the subject of an open records request by the CR Gazette.
As an appointee to the Board of Regents, you are entrusted by the public to maintain the quality of the State of Iowa's most valuable resources. That you would so callously violate that trust by hastily convening to discuss, without serious study or public comment, the most important decision affecting the University of Northern Iowa in decades, is both unethical and grossly incompetent.
Adam Butler
8:18 pm on Tuesday, March 20, 2012
And I should add that I sent another round of email to the regents yesterday that included a unique, shortened URL to some finance charts. The URL has been clicked once.
Here are the charts for those of you who haven't seen them:
http://goo.gl/kanK2
Theresa Dethlefs
8:56 pm on Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Alison, Great reporting! I sent my first round of emails to each of the regents early on Feb. 27th.
Theresa Dethlefs
9:08 pm on Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Alison, Did the letters to the regents have to use the term "Price Lab School" for them to be included in your search?
Alison Gowans
9:54 am on Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Theresa - Our request asked for emails about closing Price Lab, dating back to Dec. 1. I'm not sure how they determined which emails met that requirement.
Lisa Orsborn
10:01 pm on Tuesday, March 20, 2012
I sent emails to all Board of Regents members before the February 27th meeting. Great reporting by the way!!!
Stefanie Friedman Rose
6:02 am on Wednesday, March 21, 2012
I sent emails on 2/24 and 2/26 to all regents. 2 responded that they received them. 1 emailed back about a week later saying my request may be part of the Gazette's FIOA.
Thanks for your reporting!
Linda Reichle Heinzel
9:08 am on Wednesday, March 21, 2012
I emailed all, save Jack Evans, the regents on Feb 25, as did my husband. On Feb 27, I emailed Jack Evans. I'd be happy to forward them to you. My subject line was UNI College of Education and MPLS, Jack Evans subject line= Price Lab Closure is bad for Iowa.
Laurel Shaw
9:33 am on Wednesday, March 21, 2012
I emailed them this on the 25th:
Please tell Ben Allen that rash decisions like this are not necessary. There isn't any indication yet that I've seen regarding UNI having funding cut, and there hasn't been the opportunity for the citizens of Iowa to lobby our legislature on issues, like funding of UNI, for this coming year. Please don't remove the people from the process. It is disrespectful to UNI students, the citizens of Iowa, and the purpose and history of the Board of Regents to jump the gun on this.
I emailed them this on the morning on the 27th:
As an appointee to the Board of Regents, you are entrusted by the public to maintain the quality of the State of Iowa's most valuable resources. That you would so callously violate that trust by hastily convening to discuss, without serious study or public comment, the most important decision affecting the University of Northern Iowa in decades, is both unethical and grossly incompetent.
I got a notice as reply, from Katie Mulholland, that the second email was subject to aFOIA request by the Gazette on 3/5
Laurel Shaw
9:37 am on Wednesday, March 21, 2012
@Theresa Yes, I am interested in what the FOIA search the Gazette filed included too. I KNOW that Katie Mullholland got one of the emails, and that stuff must have been included in the search, since I received that email from her (see previous post) but I've yet to see my stuff turn up in anything. I used the subject line "Please do the right thing for the state that you love" in the second email (which was the one I got the FOIA notice about) and "Price Lab Vote" in the other.
Laurel Shaw
9:38 am on Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Woot! Adam Butler used my words! :)
Alison Gowans
9:56 am on Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Wow, a lot of comments here! Thanks to all who are sharing what they sent!
Marty Hansen
5:40 pm on Thursday, March 22, 2012
Geez, let it go people. A hundred responses wouldn't have changed a sound business decision.