News
	Opinion
	Project '99
	Charts / Data
	Related graphic
	Links

Send us your comments

Rusty Turner, FOIArkansas Project

It was the first week of school, and Green Forest School Superintendent James Johnston wondered if the man in his office had some problem with the small Carroll County district.

Perhaps the bus didn’t get by the man’s house that morning, or he was upset because his child was assigned to the wrong teacher. Why else would a stranger come to the school office on Aug. 23, asking to see the superintendent’s contract?

Green Forest School Superintendent James Johnston figured his contract was part of the public record, but he wasn’t sure what to do when a stranger walked into his office one day and requested the information.

No, there was no problem, according to the stranger. He simply wanted to see the superintendent’s contract.

Johnston thought the contract was a public record, but he wasn’t comfortable with releasing his employment information to a stranger. He wasn’t sure what to do next.

Similar scenes played out that day in school district offices across the state as the FOIArkansas Project sent 75 people out to the state’s 75 counties to test compliance with state’s open records law.

Of Arkansas’ 310 school districts, one was selected at random in each county. They represent roughly equal numbers of small, medium and large enrollments.

Surveyors sought access to the superintendent’s 1999-2000 employment contract in each of the districts surveyed.

Fifty-four, or 72 percent, of the 75 school districts surveyed complied with the initial request. Three others, including Green Forest, complied with the request during the surveyor’s second visit on the same day. Seven mailed copies of the contract to the surveyors within three days of the initial request and 11 did not provide the requested contract.

The same surveyors who visited a school district in each county on Aug. 23, went to the county jail, the county unit of the state Health Department and a city.

Municipal offices complied with 87 percent of the initial requests for documents and jails had a 61 percent rate of compliance. State Health Department offices had the lowest response rate with 51 percent.

Nine school districts that didn’t comply on the day of the survey reported that the contract was unavailable.

At five districts, surveyors were referred to a county government office, either the county school supervisor or the county treasurer, to get the record. Arkansas law says that copies of all school employment contracts must be kept by the local school board, the county school supervisor’s office and, if it acts as treasurer for the school district, the county treasurer’s office.

In four cases, the survey-day requests were denied because the superintendent was not present to provide the document.

Some school officials gave other reasons for not immediately providing the records.

Jerry Newton, superintendent at Poyen schools in Grant County, expressed doubt that the surveyor had a right to see the entire contract. Newton said in an interview in September that he knew the contract was a public document, but wanted to remove his Social Security number from the contract before providing it to the surveyor. The contract is public, but state law allows certain personal information, including a Social Security number, to be redacted, or removed.

Newton didn’t provide the altered copy directly to the surveyor; instead, he mailed a copy.

Dennis Meins, superintendent at Clarendon schools, insisted that he be given a reason for the request before he would let the surveyor see his contract.

The surveyor declined to provide the information; Meins declined to provide his contract. Instead, he referred the surveyor to the county courthouse where a copy of the record was kept.

The law doesn’t require anyone to state a reason for requesting a public document.

“It caught me flat-footed,” Meins said in a September interview.

Meins said he believed that since he referred the surveyor to another office, he had complied with the law, if not the request. “I don’t think I did anything illegal or to break the FOI,” he said. “For that reason, I’m not sure I’d do anything differently (if asked again).”

A number of schools declined to provide photocopies of the contracts, even though they did allow surveyors to read the contracts. Most cited the presence of the Social Security number on the contract as the reason for not making a copy. The FOIA provides for the opportunity to copy all public records, but does not require that a government entity make photocopies.

Twenty-six districts, or 35 percent, complied quickly and/or were extremely helpful, surveyors reported.

At Plainview-Rover School District in Yell County, Superintendent Jimmy Cunningham realized after the surveyor left that he’d copied the wrong document. He made a copy of the proper contract and sought out the surveyor in the parking lot to give her the correct document.

Another of the fast responses was in Rogers in Benton County, even though the superintendent, Janie Darr, said her staff has little experience with FOI requests.

“Had I not been here, the (surveyor) may have been asked to wait,” Darr said in September.

Since the day of the survey, Darr said a list has been prepared for staff members telling them what documents can be made available to the public in hopes of eliminating any delays in compliance.

As a rule, the superintendents were very curious about why the record was being requested. Out of 75 requests, 41 surveyors were asked why they wanted the record. Some school officials went to extreme lengths to find out. One surveyor said he was “grilled” for 45 minutes by the superintendent before finally getting the contract. Another surveyor said she was questioned for 15 or 20 minutes while the superintendent searched his office for his current contract.

Kristen Gould, attorney for the Arkansas School Board Association, said at a meeting of a state committee last month that one school official even “called in a favor” and tried to have the license plate number on the car of a surveyor traced. The request was refused, she said.

In an interview, Gould said the association provides training opportunities for school board members and administrators to learn about the FOIA. However, she said, the personal nature of an employment contract may have given some of the school employees pause before providing what is clearly a public document.

Gould said part of her job is “phone law,” answering legal questions on-the-spot for school board members and administrators. She said FOIA is one of the top three subjects about which she is questioned.

Her advice, she said, is to provide non-exempt documents as quickly as possible.

“The best analogy I have is, ‘You’re a library; if you’ve got what they ask for, show it to them.’” Gould said.

Gould said she received several calls on the day of the survey, and that her advice was to delete the Social Security number from the contract and provide a copy immediately.

Back in Green Forest, Johnston eventually complied with the stranger’s request, but not before seeking advice. He said he was very curious why the request was made, and hesitant to provide the record because the employment contract is so personal.

“That puts it on a more personal level,” Johnston said. “If (the surveyor) had asked for a teacher’s contract, I’d have been more reluctant to release it.”