Natick Public Schools’ School Committee chair contacts state legislature to change FOIA law to prevent parents from accessing records

A concerned community member provided Parents Defending Education with an email from School Committee chair Shai Fuxman of Natick Public Schools that was received from a public records request. The email is directed to Karen Adelman-Foster who is the community engagement director and municipal policy director for Democratic Massachusetts State Senate President Karen Spilka. Democratic Massachusetts State Rep. David Linsky was also included in the email. The public records request searched for emails from March 15, 2024, to April 15, 2024, regarding discussions of limiting public records requests from the public.

School Committee chair Shai Fuxman provided Karen Adelman-Foster in the email with a list of topics for Senate President Karen Spilka to address during the legislative update that occurred on April 3, 2024. One topic was “reform needed for FOIA requests.” The reasoning is that FOIA requests “have been weaponized by the Far Right.” He added: “The time to fulfill these is undermining capacity of educators to focus on Teaching and Learning and costing the districts the value of educator time and cost of legal services.”

The next topic was “addressing ‘Parent Rights’ challenges at the State level (e.g., requests for information on transgender students, increase in bullying against transgender students, etc.).”

Parental rights advocates have used public records requests, also known as FOIA requests, in recent years to expose school districts for pushing gender ideology onto students in classrooms and for keeping the gender identity of students hidden from parents. Shai Fuxman appears to be encouraging the state legislature to change the law to prevent people from being able to send in public records requests to access records in an effort to push back against parents.