Hinsdale District 86 May Curb Openness, Doing Away With Records Log

DARIEN, IL – For more than a decade, Hinsdale High School District 86 has separated itself from nearly all government bodies in Illinois by posting an online public records log.

This has let the public view the district's responses to Freedom of Information Act requests.

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Now, a school board majority wants to get rid of it. They cited an opinion from their lawyer that says such a log increases the district's liability unnecessarily.

Four years ago, another attorney gave the board the same advice. But five of the seven board members rejected it. The majority included Jeff Waters, the only member who is still serving.

Back then, Waters said removing the log was "clearly a detriment to transparency." He cast doubt on the liability argument. And he suggested the idea came from then-Superintendent Tammy Prentiss and the board's president at the time, Erik Held, both of whom he opposed on many issues.

At this week's board meeting, Waters abandoned his position, joining six of the seven board members and essentially agreeing with his previous adversaries, Prentiss and Held.

Asked about the change Thursday, Waters referred questions to the board's president, Catherine Greenspon.

The board could vote to do away with the log as soon as next month.

One member, Liz Mitha, expressed reservations.

"I think it is hard to walk back something that has been publicly available for community members," she said. "It does not, frankly, publicly look positive to stop publishing things that are available."

As for liability, Mitha said, "I am also of the mind that if we're doing things appropriately, if we have FOIAs, then in most cases, it shouldn't yield anything that will feed into litigation... We do things right, there's nothing to see here."

The board said it would continue to include Freedom of Information Act reports in the board's agenda packets every month. That way, they said, the public can see others' requests, but not the responsive documents.

Among the entities that feature similar online logs are Hinsdale School District 181, Bensenville and the Illinois Tollway.

On New Year's Eve 2023, a District 86 employee removed the log's records from 2013 to 2021, apparently at the direction of higher-ups. The public was not told.

When the action was discovered months later, officials cited broken links in older requests. But they did not identify a public benefit for deleting the records from the website.

The district called the process "archiving." Officials objected to the public using words such as "erased" or "deleted."

In 2024, officials said they would only keep the current year of files online, plus the two previous calendar years. The removal would take place every New Year's Eve.

The district did not reveal the reason.