Learning together part 5: West Genesee Transparency
Hello Camillus, I hope everyone is having a good day!
Learning together part 5: West Genesee Transparency
So I was checking on some things with the
RTN School Board Docs Dash the "WGBDD"🤣(cracks me up everytime)
I wondered if there were going to be any meeting minutes, etc., and noticed there were none for the:
PUBLIC HEARING of the West Genesee Central School District Board of Education Wednesday, May 6, 2026
There were none, no biggie, I suppose. Maybe that’s just how those sessions go.
But then I noticed something...
Usually, my script downloads the meeting and just references it if there are no meeting minutes. But I realized they had blocked my script.
Honestly, this was kind of expected. I downloaded all of their data going back to 2022 some time ago, before I actually launched the WGBDD.
They definitely don’t want anyone to have easy access to the data... I get it.
There are a ton of ways for me to get around this. The volume is low, and manual updating is easy, so whatever.
What is more concerning is that it appears they took down the meeting minutes for the meeting I highlighted in my post.**
👉 Read the full post Learning Together Part: 3→
The cool part is that my script aggregates the data so it’s local to RTN. But if you click the link next to the meeting and browse to the actual meeting, you will no longer see those minutes.
It’s almost like they don’t want you to see or verify. Go figure.
You would think there would be some kind of rules based on public records of meetings being taken down after the fact, but as I have learned the hard way, rules don’t seem to apply to the West Genesee BOE and David C. Bills.
I suppose the bigger question now is: will they allow us to see meeting minutes going forward, now that they know people are looking?
Or was it only fine when actually getting useful patterns from the data was impossible?
So this is the meeting in question:
2026-04-22
And here it is on the West genesee board docs site
Here is what it should look like
2026-03-24
👉 Read the full post Learning Together Part: 3→
So yeah, it seems they are willing to pull down public records.
And who knows? Maybe they won’t use them going forward.
Maybe the David C. Bills system will put the meeting minutes back up. That would be the transparent thing to do.
But I’m sure they are confident that they have “the right” to do it. It Just looks extra slimy right now.
It appears that if you wanted to verify my BoardDocs data against West Genesee’s actual site data, you cannot.
However, if you look at the structure of my data, you will see that it was just pulled before they took down the public record.
They do love FOIL delays. Requests over there, maybe we’ll have to go that route now?
I created a quick template for anyone wanting to jam up their email box, although at this point, it would be hard to trust anything they send over.
Hello,
Pursuant to the New York Freedom of Information Law, I am requesting a copy of the meeting minutes for the West Genesee Central School District Board of Education meeting held on [INSERT MEETING DATE].
Please provide the records electronically by email if available.
If this request is denied in whole or in part, please provide the reason for denial in writing and identify the person or body to whom an appeal may be directed.
Thank you.
[NAME]
Peace, Love and Missing Data
-RTN
