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Some agencies have a different tactic: go really slowly. I sent a public records request to my local school district on March 9th 2026. They responded on 19th March 2026 saying they'd respond on in late April. Since then, every month they've sent an email with some small portion of the records, with a PDF letter saying they'll send a follow up a month later. I've received 8 of those responses so far, and there's no indication when, if ever, I will have received all the records responsive to my request.
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Having been on the other side, the delay may not be a deliberate strategy. Your question likely landed in someone's inbox. The work falls outside normal scope of the person's job. There's likely zero guidance on how to answer and an implication that the person is personally liable if they accidentally reveal something that legitimately should not be revealed, like PII. And the question is competing with many other priorities in their inbox making it easier to snooze it for another day. This is not an excuse just an explanation. I was not aware of some of this until I got here. I try hard to answer thoroughly and with as much detail as possible. Sometimes it just takes a while.
Yup, the Milwaukee PD took over 6 months for a fairly basic records request, and that was even with me following up monthly to ask them for an update. In the end, the only cost to me was <$5 for the 2GB flash drive they put the files on. Unfortunately Wisconsin State Law only gives vague guidelines on this ("must respond reasonably quickly" or something along those lines)
My local school board fought an OPRA request in NJ for a followup on something they had responded to a few weeks before. It cost them over $31,000 to fight over a few minor emails because the district business adminstrator was mildly embarrassed by them.
At this point, why won't you find 100 like-minded people and each of you file a FOIA request for 1/100th of the data? Instead of extending the deadline by another X each time they reply, all of the requests will have to be replied to within the same 1X, and with sufficiently small requests they won't be able to paginate.
And this is when you get on each and every single school board meeting agenda and sit in on every single public meeting available. You ask them repeatedly why there’s a delay in public record release. You ask them all privately at every meeting for an update. Be patient. Be polite. Be kind. But be fucking absolutely persistent; especially at the public meetings. They want to be a fucking obstructionist? No problem; be persistent and public. School board members are not generally career politicians; they’re largely single issue members who leave once their kids are done with the district or they move on to another office or area. School board members don’t like political pressure from the public. School district administrators are largely shielded from the public. Make them feel the pressure.