If you are not reading the incredible citizen journalism of teacher Justin Parmenter and his blog Notes From The Chalkboard, then do so.

Now.

His uncovering of the surreptitious machinations of the new teacher licensure and salary proposals from the PEPSC Committee, DPI, and the Human Capital Roundtable is epic. And it has obviously exposed the Department of Public Instruction ( or Department of Private Interest) to the point that it is rather immaturely trying to retaliate.

Here is an email from Blair Rhodes, DPI’s Director of Commmunication and Information Services, to Justin that was shared this morning on social media.

Petty, huh?

Justin never demanded that his requests be completed in any amount of time.

Now they are threatening to issue invoices for time and “resources” used. That obviously could be any amount they deem “worthy” of their efforts.

All of those emails and a few search terms and names couldn’t be used to just do simple searches to create a response to the request? Really it doesn’t take much. It’s just that the public wants to know what is in the public domain dealing with a public issue that has effects on, well, the public. And the entities that are being asked to share the contents of the public are paid handsomely by public dollars. Even the material that is requested deals with public school teachers in public schools who are not very well paid.

So, why not just make them think more about charging for public records requests?

Send one in yourself – specifically any emails between DPI officials and people on the relevent committees and parties.

You can make those requests with this form.

And if they send you an invoice, share it on social media.

Then tell them there is a multi-billion dollar surplus in the state budget built on the backs of citizens that they can “recoup” their money from.