Louisiana Education Superintendent John White has filed two lawsuits in Baton Rouge over public records requests.
The Advertiser reports the requests were made by James Finney, a Baton Rouge resident who is a fixture at state and local education board meetings. Other requests were made by Michael Deshotels, a Louisiana educator and blogger.
According to the first suit, Finney made 50 public records requests to the Louisiana Department of Education between September 2015 and April 2016. The suit addresses 11 requests.
The department does not have all of the records that meet Finney’s requests, according to the lawsuit.
Finney has requested information on student ACT scores, technical reports and scaled scores for end-of-course tests, student-specific standardized test scores, raw data used to compile school performance scores and more.
“Creation of these records would require a significant amount of staff time and would interfere with the operation of the department’s constitutional and legal duties,” attorney G.M. Millet Jr. wrote in his petition on White’s behalf. “As such, these requests are overly and unduly burdensome.”
Millet added that some of the requested material is exempt from public records laws. According to the suit, White and his staff responded to Finney’s requests, either with available information or explanations of why they cannot provide the data.
The suit asks for a 19th Judicial District Court judge to either declare that the education department is not required to create the requested records, or establish a fee for each record the department must produce.
According to the second suit, Deshotels requested school enrollments, as well as information on students by ethnicity and those who receive free or reduced lunches. Finney requested detailed enrollment data for all Louisiana public schools since July 2006.
According to the suit, much of the requested data cannot be made available because of federal privacy laws.
