Costs for recording items on the Rapides School Board agenda upon request for a “Life Book”
A nonprofit organization that requested public records from the Rapides Parish School District regarding a religious book distributed at a Pineville elementary school was told it would have to pay $2 million for copies of the requested book.
Superintendent Jeff Powell later told the attorney who requested the records that the original request was “very comprehensive” and he was confident the request could be fulfilled for much less money. Powell also added an item to the July 2 regular meeting agenda to discuss the cost of requesting records.
The request follows the distribution of a youth religious book, “The Life Book,” by members of Journey Church to students at Lessie Moore Elementary School during a “Together Tuesday” event in April. A parent of a student at Lessie Moore complained to the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the separation of church and state.
The Life Book is provided free of charge to churches upon request from Gideon International. It features fictional characters reading or discussing Bible passages for youth. The entire book is also available online.
The parent whose child did not take a book but learned about its contents from other students was upset by a section of the book that deals with premarital sex. The foundation claims that children began referring to it as “the sex book.”
The book was collected by students the same day. Pastor James Greer of Journey did not comment on the book distribution when contacted by The Town Talk on June 5.
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The school district issued a statement on May 17 saying it had not received a complaint from any Rapides Parish parents, but referred to the complaint from an unnamed group.
Hirsh Joshi is the foundation’s attorney who filed the complaint on behalf of the parent company, and he also filed the records request on May 3.
In it, he asked the district to provide him with all communications – emails, text messages, and any other form of written communication – regarding book distribution between district and Lessie Moore staff, between Lessie Moore staff, and between district staff and Journey Church.
Joshi provided specific dates and search terms, including “the life book,” “the sex book,” “Journey Church,” or “church.” He also searched for any complaints, anonymous or not, filed with the county administration or Lessie Moore about the distribution.
He said the district responded on June 12 and quoted him a price of nearly $2 million, based on a $1-per-page rate. But Joshi also wrote that he could not find anything on the district’s website to support that request.
“It appears that RPSD does not have a publicly available policy on the cost of pages in a public records request,” he wrote. “The $1 per page figure seems completely made up. However, we welcome any public link supporting RPSD’s policy of charging $1 per page.”
He also stated that using the word “the” in searches may lead to a price increase.
Powell responded on June 21 that his assistant had tried to call Joshi several times during attempts to “process your original, very comprehensive request for records,” but she never received a response to those calls.
But the superintendent said in a response Joshi provided to Town Talk that the district would be happy to accommodate the request and was “confident” that his request would be much smaller and less costly.
Powell added an item to the agenda for the July 2 regular meeting to “revise and amend the fee schedule for requests for records” to an existing administrative records policy.
Louisiana’s public records law was changed in mid-June when Governor Jeff Landry signed a law that essentially absolves public officials of personal liability if they withhold records or fail to meet deadlines for responding to requests for information.
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