Hinsdale High School District 86 removed its online public records log this week.
The District 86 board voted 6-1 on Oct. 27 to eliminate its public-facing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) log, an online archive where anyone could view the district's responses to public records requests, Patch first reported. The log was gone from the district's website by Wednesday morning.
Board member Liz Mitha cast the only vote against removal. At the board's Sept. 29 meeting, when the proposal was discussed, Mitha argued the log served a vital purpose.
"FOIA is used by the D86 community to improve transparency and to hold the district and elected board members accountable," she said.
The district created the log in 2013, according to the Oct. 27 board agenda item. A GovQA portal was added in 2018 to let requesters submit and track their own requests. District 86 was one of the few public bodies in Illinois to maintain such a log. Hinsdale School District 181, the village of Bensenville and the Illinois Tollway are among the handful that do.
A new argument tipped the scale
District law firms had pushed to kill the log for years, arguing it created unnecessary liability if protected information were mistakenly released. Four years ago, five of seven board members rejected that advice. No formal vote was taken, but the majority was clear, Patch reported in May 2022 coverage.
This time, the district's current law firm, Evergreen Park-based Odelson, Murphey, Frazier and McGrath, added a new argument. At the Sept. 29 meeting, attorney Lauren DaValle raised the possibility that artificial intelligence could mine the log's data.
"Could AI be used to take all this data and possibly identify students or security risks?" DaValle said, according to Patch's September coverage.
Board member Bobby Fischer echoed the concern at that meeting, saying the district was unnecessarily exposing staff and student information to AI scraping tools.
The board agenda item listed six reasons for elimination, including growing request volume, ambiguity in statutory exemptions, retention risks under the Personnel Records Review Act and the possibility of defamation or privacy claims.
Waters reversed course
Board member Jeff Waters voted with the majority on Oct. 27. That marked a reversal. In 2022, Waters opposed eliminating the log and called removing it "clearly a detriment to transparency," Patch reported at the time. He also cast doubt on the liability argument and suggested the push came from then-Superintendent Tammy Prentiss and then-board President Erik Held.
Patch reported in August that Waters declined to explain his changed position, referring questions to board President Catherine Greenspon. No on-record explanation from Waters appears in the public record.
What replaces the log
The district said it will continue to include FOIA reports in the board's monthly agenda packets. Those reports list tracking numbers, receipt dates, response dates and what records were requested. Individual requesters will still be able to access their own request archives through the GovQA portal.
But the public will no longer be able to view other people's requests or the district's responsive documents online.
The Hinsdalean urged the board in a September editorial to keep the log unless the district could point to a lawsuit or multiple suits in other districts arising from such a practice. The district has not publicly identified any such case.
Hinsdale education week ahead
No upcoming District 86 or District 181 board meeting dates, public hearings or education-related community events for the coming week were identified in the available source material. Residents can check the District 86 website for updated meeting schedules and agenda postings.
