Halifax County School Board FOIA controversy – Round #4

Here’s my reply to Larry Clark’s email.

Mr. Clark (and Ms. Mahan),

After reading your lawyer’s interpretation of the School Board’s compliance with FOIA, I concur with your opinion that you are indeed complying with the law, but that doesn’t make it “right”.

I ask you to increase the public visibility of everything that the Halifax County School Board does. Instead of relying on what little that you have to do to ensure compliance, I call on you to set a new precedent and example by going beyond what the FOIA says that you have to do.

If a document is exempt under FOIA guidelines, no one should have a problem with that document not being made available. But when a document has nothing sensitive in it (i.e. the “AP/dual enrollment proposal” from the most recent school board meeting), I feel that you should actively encourage the dissemination of it by making it as readily available as possible.

A person in the postion that you are in (and that applies to all school board members as well as Mr. Stapleton) should not have to rely on sentences like “There is a distinction that is clearly made in Sections 2.2-3704 and 2.2-3707, between what must be made available for “inspection” and what must be made available by “copying” to justify the reasonings on why documents are not immediately forthcoming to the public.

It is also a shame in today’s electronic world for the Halifax County School Board to resort to requiring that all FOIA requests be made in writing and to say that you will comply in a required number of days. In less than a minute, any competent user could attach documents to an email and reply back to any citizen requesting information.

In summary… Yes, you are complying with the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. However, you could do a lot more if you chose to. I hope that this letter encourages you to indeed do more and bring more sunshine into the operations of the Halifax County School Board.

Sincerely,

Bruce Hedrick

More to come…