The pandemic opened the eyes of many parents as they finally got a front-row seat to their child’s education. Unfortunately, it exposed the inequities in their school’s curriculum and instructional methods, prompting some families to enroll their children in private schools or even homeschool. Now, parents are digging even deeper, right down to the discussions being held in the classroom, in their quest to determine whether teachers are teaching “appropriate” material.
Across the country, state lawmakers are cracking down on classroom conduct, not in the form of behavior but instruction. In Arizona, for example, State Superintendent Tom Horne launched the “Empower Hotline” for parents and families to report lessons they deem inappropriate.
“The Empower Hotline offers you the opportunity to make a report about inappropriate lessons that detract from teaching academic standards such as those that focus on race or ethnicity, rather than individuals and merit, promoting gender ideology, social-emotional learning or inappropriate sexual content,” explains the department’s website.
In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis is expanding his so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, otherwise known as the Parental Rights in Education Act. The newest iteration of the bill would ban discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in grades 4 through 12, not just K-3.
The culmination of these events sparked a wave of parents expressing a desire to have a hand in their child’s education. As schools have learned to operate in transparency, parents are taking matters into their own hands by submitting records requests through the Freedom of Information Act.
One Virginia school has allocated around $500,000 in its budget specifically for processing these public records requests, The Washington Post reports. In Arkansas, one district received 100 requests in just 90 days, costing the district nearly $20,000 and 400 hours of staff labor.
Such requests are forcing districts to divert staff to address “historic” levels of FOIA requests. Chris Picha, director of human resources at Owatonna Public Schools in Minnesota, told The Washington Post that she’s been “plowing her way” through requests sent by the citizens’ group United Patriots for Accountability. The group asked in the summer of 2021 for all school communications and records that used 19 specific phrases, including “Black Lives Matter,” “institutional racism” and “Whiteness.”
According to the article, it’s consumed over $160,000 of the district’s money and an estimated 2,200 hours of staff time. Picha said she has generated nearly 170,000 pages of records and predicts it will take one more year to complete the request.
“I am very tired,” she told The Washington Post. “I almost want to vomit when I hear the word ‘redaction.'”
FOIA requests are complex and expansive, especially for schools as parents want access to school emails, lesson plans and other documents, all of which must be carefully reviewed as to avoid breaking federal privacy laws. It’s become a new headache for education leaders and administrators who see it as another distraction that’s pulling resources that could be used for other issues plaguing schools, like student mental health, academics and teacher shortages.
“This has now become a sort of tool of choice for interrogating controversial policies,” Ohio State University Professor Margaret Kwoka told The Washington Post.
While there is no national database that tracks the number of FOIA requests sent to schools, Granicus, a company that offers request processing software, reported a 62% increase in the number of K12 districts signing up for its service since 2020.
Transparency advocates see it as a step in the right direction as parents and taxpayers seek ways to better understand their public schools.
“I like to see more citizen engagement,” Executive Director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government Megan Rhyne told The Washington Post. “To the extent that these people are demanding answers and wanting to know how things work in their local school district, I think that is a good thing.”
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