Court gives paper school bus video, with student IDs removed

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A newspaper can get a copy of a school bus surveillance video, but identifying images of the students must be redacted, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

The court said Easton Area School District did not prove it would lose federal funding if it provided the recording of a bus altercation to a reporter from The Express-Times of Easton.

Justice Kevin Dougherty wrote that the students' images could be redacted by blurring or darkening parts of the recording that show their identities.

The opinion said the reporter, Rudy Miller, sought the surveillance video in reporting about a 2017 incident inside a bus during which an elementary school teacher may have roughly disciplined a child.

A school official told Miller the video was being used as evidence in a pending disciplinary action against the teacher.

The district has to balance the interests of students and parents to control public access to the students' images against the public's interest in seeing them, Dougherty wrote.

But in this case, that balancing test is not needed, he said.

“Because (Miller) here expressly disclaims any public interest in disclosure of the identities of the students depicted in the video, the district need not weigh any further; it can effectuate access to the requested record without violating the children's informational privacy rights by redacting their images," Dougherty wrote.