Doing a FOIA request for school leader emails

[Anonymous]

if You would like to get a hold of school based emails that are discussing you or your child- what is the process?

[Anonymous]

They will know its you. Can’t anonymize a FOIA request, unless you hire a law firm.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They will know its you. Can’t anonymize a FOIA request, unless you hire a law firm.

What makes you think OP wants to be anonymous?

[Anonymous]

I don’t care if they know it’s me.
I just don’t know if these are obtainable uber FOIA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t care if they know it’s me.
I just don’t know if these are obtainable uber FOIA.

If it’s DCPS, this will explain the process:
https://dc.gov/page/freedom-information-act-foia

[Anonymous]

I know a couple people with IEP issues who have been somewhat successful with obtaining these records. Both had lawyers involved (due process complaints). They didn’t go through FOIA due to the timeline and fear that email would be deleted as part of DCPS’ standard email deletion policy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know a couple people with IEP issues who have been somewhat successful with obtaining these records. Both had lawyers involved (due process complaints). They didn’t go through FOIA due to the timeline and fear that email would be deleted as part of DCPS’ standard email deletion policy.

As a teacher I don’t know of any deletion policy beyond how much storage we have. Sometimes I need to go in and delete emails to make room. A FOIA request should also immediately prevent anyone from deleting the emails and would be a violation if they deleted them to prevent releasing them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know a couple people with IEP issues who have been somewhat successful with obtaining these records. Both had lawyers involved (due process complaints). They didn’t go through FOIA due to the timeline and fear that email would be deleted as part of DCPS’ standard email deletion policy.

As a teacher I don’t know of any deletion policy beyond how much storage we have. Sometimes I need to go in and delete emails to make room. A FOIA request should also immediately prevent anyone from deleting the emails and would be a violation if they deleted them to prevent releasing them.

Right. But most business / govt agencies auto delete emails after a certain length of time (where I work it is 3 months) or limit end users storage.

[Anonymous]

Yes, you can.

You can't make a blanket request for e-mails but you can ask for any e-mails mentioning certain keywords.

You will probably be asked to pay for them, however -- time to search and copying costs.

[Anonymous]

FOIA won't get you much, as it's about disclosure of records to the public, and a lot of the information will be redacted. Make an access request for your child's records under the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which gives you the right to review those records. Note, however, that these emails might not be in the education records, although you could still ask to see them, and they might feel more inclined to provide information to you than they would otherwise release under FOIA.

[Anonymous]

For this reason my school now states we cannot put a child's name or initials in an email. All our emails say, "A student was involved in xyz this morning. Name to follow in another email." Next email says nothing but "Larlo Jenkins".

So...you may not get what you're hoping for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For this reason my school now states we cannot put a child's name or initials in an email. All our emails say, "A student was involved in xyz this morning. Name to follow in another email." Next email says nothing but "Larlo Jenkins".

So...you may not get what you're hoping for.

Wow, that seems very “CYA” of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For this reason my school now states we cannot put a child's name or initials in an email. All our emails say, "A student was involved in xyz this morning. Name to follow in another email." Next email says nothing but "Larlo Jenkins".

So...you may not get what you're hoping for.

Please identify the school so we can sue it for noncompliance with the law.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For this reason my school now states we cannot put a child's name or initials in an email. All our emails say, "A student was involved in xyz this morning. Name to follow in another email." Next email says nothing but "Larlo Jenkins".

So...you may not get what you're hoping for.

Please identify the school so we can sue it for noncompliance with the law.

What law exactly?

[Anonymous]

Yeah; that’s certainly CYA for the school but that’s also a pretty common PII-protection technique.