School districts pricing out parents on record requests by charging tens of thousands in 'exorbitant fees'

[Circus Party]

Parents around the United States are being charged tens of thousands
of dollars, including some fees into the millions, for public records
requests in their school districts, Fox News Digital has learned.

Fox News Digital spoke with parents around the county – such as in
Michigan, Oregon, and Rhode Island — as well as with public records
experts who said they believed schools were using exorbitant fees in
order to price parents out of the information they are legally
entitled to, such as those related to curriculum.

A parent from Frederick County Public Schools in Maryland told Fox
News Digital that she requested emails that spanned one month between
various entities and was asked to pay $5,000. "I never got the
[records] because that's well beyond what I'm willing to pay for
information my tax dollars already paid for," she said. FCPS was
contacted for comment but did not immediately respond.

In Oregon, the Oregon Department of Education slapped on $10 per email
review in various requests. For example, to review 963 emails, the fee
was $9,630; for 382 emails, the fee was $3,820; and 109 emails would
cost $1,090, according to a complaint with the attorney general that
was reviewed by Fox News Digital. The total fees subject to the
complaint were ultimately reduced from nearly 15K to a few hundred
bucks.

Another request a parent sent into ODE came back with a fee of $1,525.
"You may narrow the scope of your request to reduce your overall cost
estimate," a rules coordinator at ODE said, according to an email
reviewed by Fox News Digital.

"How could I narrow my request? Is this not a single document?… I do
not understand what you mean by narrowing or how 1 document costs
$1,525 to download and email to me. Or why 3 hours of time is needed
by IT to again download 1 document and email it. Please explain," the
parent asked. Fox News Digital reached out to ODE for comment but did
not immediately receive a response.

In Rochester, Michigan, the district reportedly charged fees as high
as $18 million to complete their requests. "I don’t know what they’re
hiding, but they’re definitely hiding information. Why make it so
difficult for parents to get [public records] if they don’t have
something to hide," a parent told local media.

Another parent in the district said she had a public records fee of
$172,951.67.

"There are some parents who have in the millions and most parents are
afraid to speak out," parent Laurie Madigan said.

"FOIA allows the District to charge certain fees incurred for
processing and responding to FOIA requests when a failure to charge a
fee would result in unreasonably high costs to the District because of
the nature of the request," the school district told Fox News Digital
in a statement. Examples they provided included voluminous requests,
requests that require time-consuming searches, and significant
redaction.

The parents' fears of sharing their fee stubs with the media are due
to stories of school districts acting against parents. One district
was accused of spying and creating a list tracking over 200 parents;
Rochester School District ultimately paid 190K in a settlement
agreement with a parent in March who alleged her employer was
contacted by someone in the district, causing her to lose her job. The
parent had been advocating on social media in support of kids
returning to in-person learning.

Rochester's counsel denied any wrongdoing, that they engaged in
retaliation as well as the existence of the list. "Rochester Community
Schools does not have a dossier. The notion of a dossier appears to
have been conceived by an attorney for litigation purposes. Rochester
Community Schools does not have a list of names of parents who are on
social media," the district previously said.

"I didn't know that anyone was monitoring anything until I was called
into the HR office," the parent, Elena Dinverno, said. A deputy
superintendent, Debra Fragomeni, contacted her employer to let them
know she was participating in a Facebook group that had "threatening
behavior," local media reported. Fox News Digital reached out to
Fragomeni but did not immediately receive a response.

"The fact that they were doing it in secret, the fact that they were
compiling dossiers of parents… was shocking to me," the parent said.

"How dare you? How dare you track me," a parent named Stephanie Van
Deal said in a school board meeting.

In a statement to Fox News Digital the district said, "Recent tragic
experiences of violence in other districts, such as Uvalde, Texas, and
even closer to home, demand that we pay attention to all forms of
media, publications and broadcasts, including social media comments,
which have been shown to contain clues that could have prevented the
loss of life had they been acted upon."

In Rhode Island, South Kingstown, a parent activist named Nicole Solas
sent in requests that amounted to 74K regarding the school's
curriculum for her daughter, who was in kindergarten at the time. She
told Fox News Digital it was her last resort as the school refused to
answer her questions.

"If public information is priced outside of affordability, and it's
not really public information, it's a government secret," Solas said.

"I don't think [this fee] is reasonable under any circumstances," her
attorney Jon Riches of the Goldwater Institute, said, in an interview
with Fox News Digital. "I mean, the parents have a right to know what
their kids are going to learn; and that includes getting access to the
curriculum, to lesson plans and anything else in the classroom. There
should be no charge for [it]. There shouldn't be a formal public
records process. The district should put that information up on a
publicly available website so parents and their kids can make informed
decisions."

Then, Solas was slapped with a lawsuit by a teachers union, the
National Education Association. "Essentially [they were] trying to
stop the public records process," Riches said. "I think it was a pure
intimidation tactic to tell parents that they know what's best for
their kids. And if parents are going to be active and be responsible
and try and get information, then, well, you know, they don't like it.
And then you're going to be on their list next."

"Being sued by a special interest group, the NEA, that has $300
million in a slush fund that's available to just bully stay-at-home
moms like me was a real eye-opener to how public school really
operates," Solas said.

Fox News Digital reached out to the NEA for comment but did not
immediately receive a response. However, Bob Walsh, the union’s
executive director, had previously argued that he believed Solas
should get access to the school's curriculum. The lawsuit, he said,
sought to prevent faculty's private information in order to "stop the
school committee from releasing anything that’s 100% protected under
law" and to "impose a balancing test on whether individual names
should be released — whether the privacy interests of individual
teachers outweigh any underlying elements of the requests." He added
that Solas was named in the suit because the "law requires all
interested parties to be named in the complaint."

"This case has nothing to do with Nicole Solas," Walsh said.

In December, a Florida dad who has a son with autism sued the
Hillsborough County Public Schools superintendent, Addison Davis,
after he was quoted a fee of $8,020 for a request he made on mask
mandates; the father believed virtual learning was discriminating
against his son. Fox News Digital reached out to Davis but did not
immediately receive a response.

"I’m just some random Black guy in Tampa," Blake Warner said. "If I
could realize all these harms to kids, I’m sure school board members
and administrators could as well."

The district released a statement to Fox News Digital, which said,
"The public records request in question was very broad and produced
70,000 pages of documents including emails over a two-year time span.
Many public records, including emails, contain information that may
need redaction for privacy reasons. Because this would utilize
extensive use of technology and clerical resources, the requestor
would be charged by the hour for the work required to pull, redact,
and produce the information."

The statement continued, "As always, a requestor can lessen the scope
of a request to produce fewer pages that will result in no charge. The
requestor in this case was not charged $8,000. He was given an
estimate on how long it would take to produce and redact 70,000 pages
of documents. He decided not to pay for the time it would take to
produce the information."

Additionally, journalists are also being charged exorbitant fees for
requests. In Iowa, a journalist named Jacob Hall requested records
relating to "Transgender Week" at Linn-Mar High School; it would cost
$604,000 for the records. Fox News Digital reached out to the
principal for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

Randy Evans, who is the executive director of the Iowa Freedom of
Information Council, told Fox News Digital that the 604K was the
highest he has seen thus far. However, he routinely sees fees in the
thousands, which he believes is too high. "The reality is that for
most ordinary folks in Iowa having to write a check for a $1,000 or
$1,200 dollars to get records about what is occurring in their school
district seems exorbitant to me."

Districts counter-argue that the ballooning requests they are sent
cause them to hire more people and to pay thousands to respond with
the information. Depending on the nature of the request, schools may
need to meticulously redact, or they opt to send the records to an
attorney for review.

For example, New Hanover County Schools in North Carolina decided last
year to begin charging fees due to the voluminous requests sent their
way. In one example, a request they received pulled up 400,000 emails,
which they estimated would cost $100,000 to print.

And in Minnesota, a law firm called Equality in Education filed a
request at the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan district that spanned 41
pages, which was estimated to cost $900K to fulfill. According to the
superintendent, Kent Pekel, it would take 13,000 hours to produce all
the records. A local paper strongly criticized the request. They said,
"We wish them good luck as they peruse the tens of thousands of pages
of documents in their search for a third-grade teacher’s text message
that uses the words ‘race’ and ‘critical’ in the same sentence."

However, the public records expert from Iowa counters that while he
agrees there "is a cost associated with public records," schools
should be looking for ways to keep the fees down. Evans said that
schools should pay lawyers to issue a memorandum to train staff on
what they legally need to redact and withhold, in order to – for
example – avoid violating students' privacy – or the Family Rights and
Protection Act (FERPA).

"I just don't believe that the only way that you can guard against
violating the FERPA statute is by having a lawyer half a state away
reviewing every email that is up for consideration to be released,"
Evans said.

"I think that government is using the cost as a way to place records
out of reach of ordinary folks," he continued.

And in addition to the alleged tactic to use exorbitant fees to
restrict public access, sometimes schools deny they have records that
parents may strongly believe exist.

For example, Carol Beth Litkouhi heard that a public high school in
Rochester was teaching "Ethnic and Gender Studies." When Litkouhi
asked the school for the records, they gave her a lesson plan and
informed her if she wanted more she would need to send public records
requests.

The mom sent requests for months but received denials that the records
she was requesting did not exist, she told Fox News Digital.

"They've been avoiding sending responses to other parents, too, but
they use other kinds of tactics, like they were charging people these
exorbitant fees for information," she said.

Litkouhi sued the district about the matter.

"In fact, before the lawsuit was filed, Rochester Community Schools
had provided or made available the requested materials which were
knowingly in its possession," the district told Fox News in a
statement. "An invitation was also extended to allow the requesting
party an opportunity to arrange an in-person review of any copyrighted
works responsive to the FOIA request, consistent with our obligations
to the copyright holders under applicable law. The requesting party
has not scheduled a time to review the copyrighted materials."

Carol Beth rebutted this claim, saying that it was "factually
incorrect and misleading."

"In the FOIA response for the Ethnic and Gender Studies class, the
district claimed no public records exist, apart from one lesson plan
for the first two weeks of school. Accordingly, the district did not
extend an invitation to review any records related to this particular
FOIA request," she said.

As for what parents should know about these requests, her attorney,
Steve Delie of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said, "Every
state has a freedom of information law and parents… should remember
these are public records – these are all of our records. And we should
be able to access them. And if they find barriers to that, they should
look for legal representation that can help them out."

Editor's Note: The article was updated with responses from several
school districts.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/school-districts-pricing-out-parents-record-requests-charging-tens-of-thousands-exorbitant-fees