October 12, 2012

Mr. W. Montgomery Meitler

Assistant Counsel

Texas Education Agency

1701 North Congress Avenue

Austin, Texas 78701

OR2012-16339

Dear Mr. Meitler:

You ask whether certain information is subject to required public disclosure under the Public Information Act (the "Act"), chapter 552 of the Government Code. Your request was assigned ID# 468205 (TEA PIR# 17998).

The Texas Education Agency (the "agency") received a request for information related to a specified incident involving the requestor's client. You state the agency had redacted some information pursuant to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act ("FERPA"), section 1232g of title 20 of the United States Code. ⁽¹⁾ You claim that the submitted information is excepted from disclosure under section 552.116 of the Government Code. We have considered the exception you claim and reviewed the submitted representative sample of information. ⁽²⁾

Section 552.116 of the Government Code provides:

(a) An audit, working paper of an audit of the state auditor or the auditor of a state agency, an institution of higher education as defined by Section 61.003, Education Code, a county, a municipality, a school district, a hospital district, or a joint board operating under Section 22.074, Transportation Code, including any audit relating to the criminal history background check of a public school employee, is excepted from [required public disclosure]. If information in an audit working paper is also maintained in another record, that other record is not excepted from [public disclosure] by this section.

(b) In this section:

(1) "Audit" means an audit authorized or required by a statute of this state or the United States, the charter or an ordinance of a municipality, an order of the commissioners court of a county, the bylaws adopted by or other action of the governing board of a hospital district, a resolution or other action of a board of trustees of a school district, including an audit by the district relating to the criminal history background check of a public school employee, or a resolution or other action of a joint board described by Subsection (a) and includes an investigation.

(2) "Audit working paper" includes all information, documentary or otherwise, prepared or maintained in conducting an audit or preparing an audit report, including:

(A) intra-agency and interagency communications; and

(B) drafts of the audit report or portions of those drafts.

Gov't Code § 552.116(a)-(b). You state the submitted information consists of "audit working papers prepared or maintained by [the agency's] Student Assessment Division Security Task Force in conducting an investigation of testing irregularities in the administration of statewide assessment instruments[.]" You inform us the investigation was "authorized by section 39.057(a)(8) of the Education Code, which permits the [c]ommissioner of [e]ducation to authorize special accreditation investigations to be conducted in response to an allegation regarding or an analysis using a statistical method result indicating a possible violation of an assessment instrument security procedure." See Educ. Code § 39.057 (listing circumstances in which the commissioner of education shall authorize investigations). Based on your representations and our review, we agree the submitted information constitutes audit working papers under section 552.116. Thus, the agency may withhold the submitted information under section 552.116 of the Government Code.

This letter ruling is limited to the particular information at issue in this request and limited to the facts as presented to us; therefore, this ruling must not be relied upon as a previous determination regarding any other information or any other circumstances.

This ruling triggers important deadlines regarding the rights and responsibilities of the governmental body and of the requestor. For more information concerning those rights and responsibilities, please visit our website at http://www.oag.state.tx.us/open/index_orl.php, or call the Office of the Attorney General's Open Government Hotline, toll free, at (877) 673-6839. Questions concerning the allowable charges for providing public information under the Act must be directed to the Cost Rules Administrator of the Office of the Attorney General, toll free at (888) 672-6787.

Sincerely,

Vanessa Burgess

Assistant Attorney General

Open Records Division

VB/dls

Ref: ID# 468205

Enc. Submitted documents

c: Requestor

(w/o enclosures)

Footnotes

1. The United States Department of Education Family Policy Compliance Office (the "DOE") has informed this office FERPA does not permit state and local educational authorities to disclose to this office, without parental consent, unredacted, personally identifiable information contained in education records for the purpose of our review in the open records ruling process under the Act. The DOE has determined FERPA determinations must be made by the educational authority in possession of the education records. We have posted a copy of the letter from the DOE to this office on the Attorney General's website: http://www.oag.state.tx.us/open/20060725usdoe.pdf.

2. We assume the "representative sample" of records submitted to this office is truly representative of the requested records as a whole. See Open Records Decision Nos. 499 (1988), 497 (1988). This open records letter does not reach, and therefore does not authorize the withholding of, any other requested records to the extent those records contain substantially different types of information than those submitted to this office.

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