As a former reporter, I don't think the amount or type of requests you are making seem overdone. I appreciated your earlier post and agree with you - the FOIA exists to provide the public with an apparatus for transparency and accountability. And, having been on the receiving end of processing FOIA requests, while it may be sometimes burdensome, it is just part of the job.
Let's also be clear, processing a FOIA request is not falling into the hands of a classroom educator, or educator-support staff. The budget hit is minimal.
And...if any government agency believes they are getting too many FOIA requests it might warrant an internal conversation among leadership as to whether they are providing the public an adequate level of transparency, accountability and insight into how they operate.
Tim is absolutely right. The whole concept of "trolling by FOIA" is just absurd. It is clear what the accusation is meant to do: intimidate you to be silent in an effort to avoid scrutiny.
As you mention, the law is clear about the purpose of the FOIA process and there are specific provisions to address abuse. Your volume of requests come nowhere close to meeting that threshold. In fact the District has very few FOIA requests overall. In January there were about a dozen and in February there were six.
Tom's point about an adequate level of transparency is key. I've had kids in D65 for years but paid minimal attention to the Board's doings. I started to pay a little more attention when Paul Goren was fired because it seemed weird at the time. He was doing a fine job, had just led the district through a successful referendum campaign, and things seemed to be rolling smoothly.
I started to become more concerned during the 2019 superintendent search, which the board conducted without any public forums or even the release of the finalists' names. To explain the closed process the Board president claimed that they were "respecting the confidentiality requested by the candidates." https://dailynorthwestern.com/2019/11/12/city/district-65-narrows-search-for-superintendent/
Of course when the superintendent's name was announced in Dec. I immediately googled it and found the NBC report on the tens of thousands of dollars he owed the City of Chicago AND that he had been a finalist in numerous searches throughout the country in the previous months.
Obviously if his name had been released in Evanston there would have been lots of questions from the public about his liabilities and conversations about the ethics we expect from public servants. (There is also the fact of his credentials, which when you look at them side-by-side with those of the finalists in the previous two searches, seem underwhelming).
But the board wanted none of this.
The Board never explained the discontinuity between their statement that he "requested confidentiality" during the search and the fact he was participating in public searches all over the country at essentially the same time. How are we supposed to believe that he was OK with being publicly named a finalist for positions in Michigan, Indianapolis, and New York, but he didn't want anyone to know he was applying for a job in Evanston?
It is just bizarre and, for me, shows a massive breach of the public trust.
This makes the need for sunlight on their operations, which you are doing through this webpage essential.
Hi Tom,
As a former reporter, I don't think the amount or type of requests you are making seem overdone. I appreciated your earlier post and agree with you - the FOIA exists to provide the public with an apparatus for transparency and accountability. And, having been on the receiving end of processing FOIA requests, while it may be sometimes burdensome, it is just part of the job.
Let's also be clear, processing a FOIA request is not falling into the hands of a classroom educator, or educator-support staff. The budget hit is minimal.
And...if any government agency believes they are getting too many FOIA requests it might warrant an internal conversation among leadership as to whether they are providing the public an adequate level of transparency, accountability and insight into how they operate.
Tim is absolutely right. The whole concept of "trolling by FOIA" is just absurd. It is clear what the accusation is meant to do: intimidate you to be silent in an effort to avoid scrutiny.
As you mention, the law is clear about the purpose of the FOIA process and there are specific provisions to address abuse. Your volume of requests come nowhere close to meeting that threshold. In fact the District has very few FOIA requests overall. In January there were about a dozen and in February there were six.
Tom's point about an adequate level of transparency is key. I've had kids in D65 for years but paid minimal attention to the Board's doings. I started to pay a little more attention when Paul Goren was fired because it seemed weird at the time. He was doing a fine job, had just led the district through a successful referendum campaign, and things seemed to be rolling smoothly.
I started to become more concerned during the 2019 superintendent search, which the board conducted without any public forums or even the release of the finalists' names. To explain the closed process the Board president claimed that they were "respecting the confidentiality requested by the candidates." https://dailynorthwestern.com/2019/11/12/city/district-65-narrows-search-for-superintendent/
Of course when the superintendent's name was announced in Dec. I immediately googled it and found the NBC report on the tens of thousands of dollars he owed the City of Chicago AND that he had been a finalist in numerous searches throughout the country in the previous months.
Obviously if his name had been released in Evanston there would have been lots of questions from the public about his liabilities and conversations about the ethics we expect from public servants. (There is also the fact of his credentials, which when you look at them side-by-side with those of the finalists in the previous two searches, seem underwhelming).
But the board wanted none of this.
The Board never explained the discontinuity between their statement that he "requested confidentiality" during the search and the fact he was participating in public searches all over the country at essentially the same time. How are we supposed to believe that he was OK with being publicly named a finalist for positions in Michigan, Indianapolis, and New York, but he didn't want anyone to know he was applying for a job in Evanston?
It is just bizarre and, for me, shows a massive breach of the public trust.
This makes the need for sunlight on their operations, which you are doing through this webpage essential.