San Juan, Puerto Rico — After the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI) filed a public records lawsuit last week, the Puerto Rico Department of Education began releasing documents Tuesday on the results of reading tests administered in the public school system last October.
CPI journalist Tatiana Díaz Ramos had sought the information through multiple channels since mid-February. After receiving no response, she turned to the courts. It is the second lawsuit CPI has filed against the Department of Education this year over the agency’s failure to release information.
“The Department of Education is once again forcing us to go to court, even after recent amendments to the Transparency Act gave it twice as much time to handle requests and were approved with the promise that they would eliminate these lawsuits,” CPI Executive Director Carla Minet said. “This case is yet another example that the issue is not a lack of time, but a lack of willingness to provide information and respond to requests.”
The Department of Education still has not turned over to Díaz Ramos the data she requested in a separate case before the San Juan Court of First Instance on the Free School Selection Program, also known as the voucher or educational certificate program, which provides eligible public school students with certificates to cover tuition and monthly school fees at private schools. It remains unclear how many public school students are enrolled in the program at each participating private school and how much money those schools received through vouchers during the 2019-20 through 2024-25 academic years.
On Tuesday, the department asked for 10 additional business days to provide that information, stating in a motion for an extension that “the undersigned attorneys are still gathering the relevant information needed to address the issues raised by the petitioner.”
The lawsuit states that “the refusal of the respondents to provide the requested public information infringes upon the petitioner’s constitutional right of access to information.”
The legal action against the Department of Education was filed by attorneys Luis José Torres Asencio, Judith W. Berkan Barnett and Steven P. Lausell Recurt, along with law student Alejandra Saldaña Ruiz of the Access to Information Project at the Inter American University of Puerto Rico School of Law.
