Fairfax Schools complain about following FOIA law

By Mark Brooks

Elizabeth Schultz just wanted to find out information about a school that had been going to be renovated. The same school turned up listed for closure later, to the surprise of almost everyone. Clifton Elementary, in the Fairfax Public Schools system, is the school in question. She was concerned about decisions being made, and didn’t get satisfaction in asking the school system the questions she had. Ms. Schultz was surprised when the estimate for the information she asked for in a FOIA request came back at $624,000.

The request was revised and resubmitted to the schools administration. (In the comments following the Washington Post article about this situation is an entry by Ms. Schultz which tries to set straight the mistakes made by the author, which as of Wednesday night had been unaddressed. More on this later. I urge everyone to read the comments.)

The crux of the issue here is the requirement of public bodies (in this case, Fairfax Schools) to abide by the requirements of the Virginia Code (§2.2-3700), otherwise known as the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. The school administration claims in the article that 20,000 hours of work looking through 40,000 emails, at $31.00 an hour would be needed to fulfill the request. The complaints of the School Board are that it takes too much time and too many work hours to accomplish this.

In my dealings with local public bodies, both the Board of Supervisors and the School Board have been anywhere from horrible to lukewarm in their fulfillment of requests I and others have made of them. In all these dealings, years worth, I have never seen a figure like $31.00 per hour. There is no FOIA requirement to use a lesser paid employee, but boards and citizens are supposed to work together, at least in theory.

A point I would like to make here is that each public body is allowed by law, to charge for the information you or I request. The public body is constrained to only the actual cost of the time involved looking for and gathering the information, and copying it or printing it out. This would seem to run counter to the Fairfax School Board’s complaints about how much it costs to fulfill a citizen’s request.

“The law is unrealistic right now,” said Elizabeth T. Bradsher, a School Board member who represents Springfield. “It’s hampering the business of the school district. We don’t have the employees to handle the surge. . . . It’s crippling the system.” The school district’s allusion to the ballooning costs of processing FOIA requests – which officials called “substantial” but declined to quantify – is not embodied in any particular bill. But it is an issue that the district’s director of government relations, Michael Molloy, has taken with him to Richmond this year.

The School Board also has up to 12 days as a matter of course to produce what was asked for before they are required to go to court to ask for more time, and additional time within that 12 days to handle large requests.

The School Board in Cumberland County, at my request, has agreed that the amount they have charged for years is actually far above the actual cost. I am talking about the per page copying cost. Their cost has been $.35 per page, whether copied on a photocopier or out of a computer on a piece of paper. Their coming meeting in February will see a new policy in it’s first reading. The new cost per page? It will be $.15.

The Fairfax Board, according to this account, is complaining that it is just too hard, too time consuming to do the work required by law. I don’t live in Fairfax, and I have no opinion about what they should do with their schools. But this behavior detailed in the article, smacks of privilege and power unchecked.

And now, as promised, a few words about the author of this piece in the Washington Post, Kevin Sieff. I don’t like bashing people just for the hell of it. I will always give someone the benefit of the doubt. This goes for the traditional press as well as individuals. However, there are several things wrong with this article from my standpoint. The author seems to unnecessarily side with the Fairfax School Board in this article.

It is troubling because a subject like FOIA deserves a rational, well reasoned look, not an ignorance of the subject almost entirely. I don’t know the author, have never read any other of his articles. But I do know the FOIA law inside and out, and this wonderful tool, really the only tool citizens have to watch what really happens in our government, deserves to be given equal time in situations just like this. If the author knew that citizens pay through the nose sometimes (and he should, based on the $624,000 estimate) just to see what is really going on in our government, he would have (I hope) countered the quoted statements by officials which makes it seem as if the schools are having to do all this on their own dime.

The solution to this is real penalties, something not seen very often. The law provides for them, and they should be levied in order to get the word out that actions have consequences. It must be said that citizens do abuse the system sometimes. It is certainly the exception rather than the rule in my opinion.

In this case, the School Board’s inaction has brought them these troubles. The citizens will get the information, either in court, or as a result of Fairfax Schools doing the right thing and quitting the griping about doing their jobs. When contacted Tuesday evening about the article and its shortcomings, the author wrote back almost immediately and said, “I’m working to resolve this.”

We’ll see. Doubtless the parents have contacted him as well.