TALLADEGA — The Daily Home currently is pursuing legal action against Talladega city schools in order to acquire the audit of R.L. Young Elementary School’s finances that may have led to the termination of the school’s principal, Ginger Paris, at the Jan. 24 school board meeting.The Daily Home’s attorney, Dennis Bailey, has been in contact with Talladega city schools attorney Mark Rasco to request the audit. Rasco told the Daily Home the audit of the school can not be released until Paris exhausts her chances to appeal the decision.
“It’s not an issue of not wanting to release the audit, but it could be exposing the school board to being sued,” Rasco said.
Rasco said the board would be willing to release the audit to the Daily Home before Paris’s appeal if she agreed to allow it to be released. He sent a letter to Paris’s attorney, Brad Proctor, asking if this would be possible.
Proctor’s letter in reply dated March 13 states, “This is the same audit that both myself and Ms. Paris requested a copy of over six weeks ago. If you will provide me with a copy of the audit, I will be glad to review with Ms. Paris and make a determination whether or not it is in her best interest for it to be published in the newspaper. However, if your client continues to withhold this information from myself and Ms. Paris, we will not be in a position to respond to your request.”
The Daily Home takes the position in its complaint that the audit is subject to the state open records law and, even if it may be used as evidence in a future administrative proceeding, it does not change the public nature of the document nor render it unavailable to public inspection.
Rasco said the city school system believes Paris will have to be given “a meaningful opportunity to rebut the evidence” or the city schools could face litigation.
On Friday, March 29, the Daily Home asked for the audit of the school system’s other schools. Rasco said the auditing company, Edgar and Associates, had not completely finished the full audit, and school board members had not seen the audit yet.
He anticipated the Daily Home would be able to obtain the full audit excluding the R.L. Young portion after the city school board is given a chance to review it.
