Poudre School District’s Board of Education passes resolution to support changing the Colorado Open Records Act to increase fees and “prioritize requests made by legitimate media outlets”

A concerned community member reached out to Parents Defending Education regarding Poudre School District’s Board of Education making a controversial decision at a meeting on August 22, 2023. The Board of Education voted to send a resolution to the Colorado Association of School Boards (CASB) to support changing the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) in a manner that favors school districts over the public submitting records requests.

The Board of Education called for CORA to be changed to allow school districts to be able to “provide more time to comply with each request,” “increase fees that public entities may legally charge to fully cover the costs associated with responding,” “prioritize requests made by legitimate media outlets,” and “update the Act to ensure that all current forms of communications personally identifiable information are appropriately incorporated with proper privacy protections (i.e., student emails with student ID needs to stay redacted).”

The Board of Education also discussed at the meeting how the Boulder Valley School District has a similar resolution.