Partnering with local newspaper for class open records project
For the past four years, I’ve assigned students in my Media Law & Ethics class to do a freedom of information project that requires each of them to file an open records request with a government agency. This spring, after I talked with editors at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on ways we might be able to partner with them on a project, we focused on vaccination rates of kids in local public schools.
The larger story, about Tarrant County becoming an anti-vaccine “hot spot,” ran over the weekend. My students’ contribution comes at the end, focusing specifically on the vaccine rates of schools in the Fort Worth Independent School District.
There were 27 students in the course, and 81 elementary schools in the district, so I required each student to send requests to three different schools, requesting two items: The number of vaccine exemption requests, and the total number of students in the school. They then have to follow those requests up and blog about their experiences. The blog is the way I push them to keep up with their assignment, requiring one post in February, two in March, and two in April, with a reflective bonus post possible before the end of the semester. We start up the project after I teach the FOI unit in the third or fourth week of the semester. (If you’re interested in the assignment structure, it’s posted in full below)
For this assignment, it was interesting how things shook out. Students began making requests, and after awhile, school officials must have turned to the district for help. Ultimately, the district compiled a database of all vaccine exemption requests and emailed it to one of my students, and then to several others as their requests came in. While the database wasn’t complete — some students had to make follow-up calls about their schools if they weren’t on there — it provided more information than we initially sought, giving us almost all of the schools in FWISD, not just elementary schools.
In the past, student got to choose their own topics for requests, which creates some challenges — they’re operating under different state laws sometimes, and the backlog on federal FOIA requests is so long that usually a student can barely get a response before the semester is over. The last time I had students do a class-wide project, they had to ask for information about any parent or citizen requests to remove books from public school libraries. That turned up some hilarious responses, which I’ll post at another time. And I have to give credit to my friend and mentor Charles Davis for that idea — I believe he did the same assignment at Mizzou long ago.
Here’s that assignment. And I’m always glad to talk for folks looking at doing a class FOI project!
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION PROJECT
Early in the semester, we will discuss the importance of Freedom of Information laws to journalists. You will make a request for information on a topic of your choice (and my approval) using the appropriate public records law in an effort to acquire the data or documents. You will write about this process — from making the request to the process and negotiation required to access the records you seek — on a blog or other public-facing online forum of your choice. You will post at least 5 entries detailing your request (minimum 1 in February, 2 in March, 2 total in April/May), including the final outcome and the documents themselves (presuming, of course, that you receive them). If a student is under the minimum number of blog posts due at the end of each month, he or she will receive a zero in place of the grade for that post. Your final blog is due on the last day of class.
Blog posts are worth 10 points each, and blog posts must be on separate days to count as a separate blog post (two posts in one day = one post). If a student writes more than 5 blog posts, up to an additional 5 points may be awarded as bonus, though those 5 points will not replace a zero for not turning submitting the minimum number of posts each month. Thus, the maximum score on the government records request assignment is 55 points (out of a possible 50).
