Office of Information Practices

U Memo 25-14
December 27, 2024
Reasonable Search for School-Specific
Football Practice Rules 

Requester sought the “exact reference and verbiage” of the rule that “states the restrictions for practicing with players from other [football] teams.”  The Department of Education (DOE) provided Requester with a copy of the Oahu Interscholastic Association (OIA) rules, and Administrative Regulations of the Hawaii High School Athletic Association, and exact references to the requested rules therein.  Requester asserted that DOE failed to disclose Mililani High School’s (MHS) school-specific rule restricting school football players from practicing with players from other teams.  

When a requester contests an agency’s response that no additional responsive records exist, OIP will generally examine whether the agency’s search for responsive records was reasonable.  OIP Op. Ltr. No. 97-8 at 4-6.  A reasonable search is one “reasonably calculated to uncover all relevant documents,” and an agency must make “a good faith effort to conduct a search for the requested records, using methods which can be reasonably expected to produce the information requested.”   Id. at 5.  However, in some instances where an agency’s staff has “actual knowledge that the type of record requested was never created,” the agency is “absolved from having to conduct a search reasonably likely to produce the requested records.”  OIP Op. Ltr. No. F16-03 at 3-4. 

Based on information provided by DOE, OIP concluded that DOE did not have to conduct a reasonable search for a school-specific rule because an employee with actual knowledge of the football practice rules implemented at MHS sufficiently explained that MHS follows the OIA rules and no school-specific rule exists, and that DOE’s response that no school-specific rule exists was proper under section 2-71-14(c), Hawaii Administrative Rules, and the UIPA.