High school journalist hit with nearly $8,000 bill for FOIA request

(newscaster)
A local high school student

getting an expensive lesson

in journalism.

He filed a Freedom
of Information Act request

with his school district,

then got slapped
with an $8,000 bill.

7 Action News reporter Curtis Jackson
is live in Plymouth tonight

with more on this,
boy, a pricey lesson.

-It sure is, an important lesson,
though,

on the value of open records.

You know, when students
with the Plymouth-Canton district

returned to school
at the beginning of the year,

they found out
that some of the websites

that were available last year

were now blocked.

That got a young reporter here

interested in knowing why.

The response was that huge bill.

-I was just interested in seeing

why they were blocking the websites
they chose to block,

and who made the decisions.

(Jackson) Salem High School senior,
Chris Robbins,

wanted those questions answered
for an article he was writing

about blocked websites
for the school newspaper.

So he sent the district
a Freedom of Information Act request,

also known as a FOIA.

-They gave me--
majority of the FOIA requests,

they gave me everything except
for the 85 staff emails.

(Jackson)
The emails were from staff members

appealing to
have some websites unblocked.

The district said Chris
could have them,

but it would cost almost $8,000.

-I was completely surprised.

I didn't expect them
to bill a student

that much money for anything.

(Jackson) The district
says the fee covers the cost

of gathering the emails.

For now, Chris
is writing the story without them.

He's hoping it will
shed some light

on a decision-making process

that should have been more public.

Journalism at its finest.

-It was pretty much a very small
number of people,

two or three people,
that made these decisions.

And I don't know if that's
necessarily a good thing.

I personally think even more people

could have gotten involved
in those decisions.

And I think
there were seven members

of the Teaching Learning Committee.

So for them to mainly
have it come down to--

the websites that we looked at,
come down to 2 or 3 people,

is a little bit surprising to us.

-Now,
in the wake of gathering his story,

Chris says
that some of the websites

that had been blocked
are now unblocked.

Perhaps that is a coincidence.

What is not a coincidence is this:

we're a little curious ourselves.

So we plan on submitting
our own FOIA

for that same information.

In Plymouth tonight,
Curtis Jackson, 7 Action News.

-That's a good idea
because my investigator,

Heather Catallo,
was standing here itching

to get in on this story,
so hopefully,

we can help this kid out.

(Catallo)
There's something there.

-Thanks, Curtis.