Stepping Back From Openness At Hinsdale District 86

HINSDALE, IL – Hinsdale High School District 86's online public records log has long been a point of pride among officials.

They have correctly noted that the district is among the few entities that post the results of Freedom of Information Act requests.

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Now, they are poised to abandon the 13-year-old practice.

For starters, the district's different law firms over the years have opposed the log, arguing it creates unnecessary liability.

Four years ago, the district's lawyer recommended the district do away with it. But five of the seven board members rejected the idea.

Now, the district's latest law firm, Evergreen Park-based Odelson, is arguing against the log.

"As the district's legal counsel, we obviously are going to err on the side of removing any practice that potentially creates exposure to the district or drives up costs," Odelson's Lauren DaValle said at the board's meeting Tuesday.

She said the district could face liability if privacy laws change or information is considered defamatory.

Then she introduced a new reason, one not heard during the debate four years ago.

"Could AI be used to take all this data and possibly identify students or security risks?" she said.

Five board members agreed.

"We are unnecessarily posting to a log where scraping tools and AI can interrogate it and put our staff information at risk and our student information at risk," member Bobby Fischer said.

He also noted that the district's legal bills are at historic lows under Odelson. (That's a far cry from two years ago when the bills with a previous firm were on track to reach an unprecedented $1 million over a year. The district and the firm are in litigation.)

"Every dollar we save on legal bills can be spent on students," he said.

Board member Liz Mitha opposed getting rid of the log.

"FOIA is used by the D86 community to improve transparency and to hold the district and elected board members accountable," she said.

Member Jeff Waters was absent. But he indicated last month that he was for the log's elimination.

However, he voted with the majority to keep the log in 2022. At the time, he said removing it 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 Tuesday's meeting, the board's president, Catherine Greenspon, said the board would vote at a later meeting on the records log.

Among the public 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.