Nine years of documents were taken offline from a popular public records portal.
Patch Staff
|Updated Wed, Oct 23, 2024 at 12:30 pm CT
HINSDALE, IL – Many were preparing to ring in the New Year on Dec. 31, 2023. It was a Sunday, near the tail end of students' winter break.
Nonetheless, a Hinsdale High School District 86 employee was working on a project at the apparent direction of at least some school board members.
The goal – to remove nine years of public records from the district's website.
Despite repeated requests for comment, no board member or administrator has offered a public benefit for this action.
When it comes to openness with the public, District 86 can point to a tradition that dates back to 2013. The district posts online the results of most Freedom of Information Act requests – officially known as the "FOIA Portal."
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It is a rare government body that does this. So does Hinsdale School District 181.
This goes above the state's requirements for openness.
Through a public records request, Patch obtained correspondence related to the decision to take the documents offline.
On New Year's Eve, District 86 employee Deb Kedrowski removed all the public records from 2013 to 2022. That was a major step back from the long tradition. The public was not told.
Late that afternoon, Kedrowski, the district's administrative chief of staff, notified administrators that the district would maintain a "3-year public records archive," which would include the current year and the two previous calendar years.
She also said requests before Jan. 1, 2022, would be "archived" from the portal. She did not explicitly say that the files would be removed from the website.
Kedrowski offered no reason for the move, other than to say it was part of "our FOIA continuous improvement efforts."
Two weeks earlier, Kedrowski emailed board President Catherine Greenspon and member Peggy James about the plan for "continuous improvement and to archive older FOIA requests."
She cited a discussion at an August meeting of the board's policy committee, which James heads.
During that meeting, James said, "Maybe there's an archive possibility of information if that's an appropriate method."
At the time, James did not indicate that she meant older record requests should be removed from the website.
Another twist to the mystery is that Kedrowski emailed a district lawyer, Steven Richart, a few minutes after her message to administrators on Dec. 31.
The entire message to Richart, who works for the Hodges Loizzi law firm, was blacked out, as was the heading.
But the district produced the document in response to Patch's request for records related to the removal.
In May 2023, Richart proposed the district do away with the public records portal, saying the district would be liable if the administration mistakenly placed private information online.
His recommendation drew the support of board member Kathleen Hirsman and board President Erik Held, members of the majority.
Minority members James, Jeff Waters and Debbie Levinthal resisted the idea. They said they get much of their information from the log.
Then two majority members, Cynthia Hanson and Terri Walker, agreed with the minority.
Of those members, only Waters, James and Walker remain on the board. None have raised public objections to the online removal of nine years of records.
In an email to Patch earlier this month, James responded to public criticism of the removal.
"The prior FOIAs have been archived, not erased," James said.
Both Patch and resident Yvonne Mayer filed public records requests for the older files. Complying this week, the district provided a link to the records, which are compiled as Google Docs files. It is not searchable or organized like the previous log.
Earlier this month, two usual allies of the current board – Kim Notaro and Linda Burke – both called for the return of the older files in some form.
The board's agenda for Thursday's meeting includes a discussion item titled "FOIA Log." No other details were given.
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