Do Records Requests Burden Hinsdale D86?

HINSDALE, IL – A Hinsdale High School District 86 board member expressed concern last week about the number of public records requests coming into district offices.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, the district is required to produce most information upon request. The law makes exceptions for some records.

Last month, the district reported receiving 14 requests.

At a board meeting, member Jeff Waters asked how the district handles such an "excessive amount of FOIAs" and how the district can minimize them.

"They can burden taxpayers tremendously," Waters said. "Some of them come from press members, so I don't think they're held accountable for this."

Debra Kedrowski, the district's administrative chief of staff, said the district is legally bound to respond to requests. She said the district operates at the highest levels of openness.

Years ago, the Illinois Policy Institute gave the district a Sunshine award for its transparency, getting 99 percent, Kedrowski said. The conservative think tank has since stopped giving the honor.

"Anything we can do to make information more accessible to our community I feel we try to do," Kedrowski said.

Waters said he would like the board to discuss the matter at a later meeting.

Interim Superintendent Rebecca Nelson said Waters brought up an interesting question.

"District 86 receives a large number of FOIA requests. There's no question about it," she said. "We can certainly inquire of our attorneys if there is something we can do... Let us explore whether there are legal things we can do when we get excessive amounts from an individual person."

The law has a provision for "recurrent requesters," which are defined as those who submitted at least 50 requests over the previous year, 15 requests in a month, and seven in a week. The deadlines to respond to such requesters are a lot longer.

For years, District 86 has been one of the few entities that publish many of the responses to requests in an online log. It also reports the wording of all requests, which is something most public bodies do not publish.

Waters is part of a new board majority that took control last May and then showed the door to then-Superintendent Tammy Prentiss.

The number of requests before and after Prentiss' exit has been about the same. But the requesters have changed. One of the most frequent requesters before the change was Catherine Greenspon, who was elected to the board last April and is now its president.

Other requesters during that time were Noel Manley, Kim Notaro and Anne Huber, all supporters of the current board.

Of the 14 requests last month, Patch submitted five of them.

Patch's requests sought a resignation letter from an assistant superintendent, a letter notifying a coach of his firing, a settlement with a student's family, any documentation showing a former superintendent did work for the district, and security records indicating when Greenspon was in the central office.

In a text message, Patch asked Waters whether he was concerned with the number of records requests when Prentiss was superintendent.

Waters said that speaking as one board member, the Freedom of Information Act was a "more than appropriate and wonderful, democratic tool to foster transparency which creates and can sustain trust from the community."

"My tenure on the Board has been consistent on finding ways to minimize the expense of the process and, to summarize my statement at the Board meeting this past Thursday, April 25th:
What can we do in District 86 to minimize that expense?" Waters said in his message. "On behalf of the 80,000 constituents in D86, I hope to explore that exact question as taxpayers do indeed finance that expenditure. Thus, my agenda item proposal for a future Board meeting."