Some district leaders say they’ve been inundated with huge data requests that appear politically motivated and can be massively expensive and difficult to decipher. At least one school board has asked lawmakers to help slow a “runaway train.”

In general open governance is good. These requests look silly at the same time, e.g. asking about CRT. At the same same time,

The Owatonna People’s Press last month reported the Owatonna school district spent $300,000 to fulfill a data request related to an equity plan and assessment and a word search of district correspondence containing words and phrases such as “Black Lives Matter,” “systemic racism” and “critical race theory.”

It’s crazy that it cost $300k to do that. I think ideally, requests like this wouldn’t be an issue even if they’re not really in good faith, because responding to them would take someone a few button clicks.

  • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
    3·
    13 days ago

    I feel like the law would be best served where FOIA requests incurring more than $1k to school districts must waiver their right to anonymous requests and must pay 50% of the cost.