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Schools

Hefty Price Tag Attached to FOIAs

Taxpayers ultimately pay the price for full disclosure.

As defined by Wikipedia, the “Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a federal freedom of information law that allows for the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents controlled by the United States Government.”  On a local level, that includes school districts, which are funded by the state.

Read any recent news headlines, and you will know that District 46 has been required to respond to multiple FOIA requests, from a variety of sources.  What hasn’t been addressed is the cost impact on the district in terms of both time and dollars. Freedom does have a price.

 “Here is a brief overview of just one FOIA.  It took 13 1/2 hours for the attorney and six hours for the district staff (two of us). Cost was $2,882 for the attorney.  This is just one example,” D46 Superintendent Ellen Correll told Patch this week.

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“We have had quite a few FOIA’s this summer.  One on P-cards (procurement cards) produced over 3,400 pages of paper that had to be copied,” she said.

School board member Michael Carbone has asked for more transparency on the use of the P-card by the district. “There is no easy method of tracking what is being spent. We’re talking about $400,000 that is unaccounted for,” Carbone said at a board meeting earlier this year.

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Two FOIA requests related to P-card documentation are posted on the District 46 site. One is from Lennie Jarratt of the Lake County Tea Party and the other from a staff member at the Daily Herald.

“We don’t want taxpayer dollars being spent on electioneering. If there were not issues going on in the district I wouldn’t need to file FOIA requests,” Jarratt said during a recent interview.

The District 46 site lists who initiated the request and what information was requested.   Through June 3, 22 FOIA requests are listed for the 2010-11 school year.    

Correll has commented at school board meetings that district staff and supplies were being used to respond as quickly and accurately as possible to the steady stream of FOIA requests.

Neighboring Woodland has processed 17 FOIA requests this past school year. The District 50 site has a FOIA request log, which tracks who requested information and the cost involved to process the request. 

According to the log, district monies have been saved by electronically sending documents, however, multiple hours of administrative time have been spent to identify and gather the information.

Although the FOIA was established in 1966, the recent increase in FOIA requests may be a reflection of a tight economy. The majority of requests are focused on determining whether the school districts are properly spending taxpayer monies.

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