A Rhode Island taxpayer asked to see contracts between her local schools and the regional authority on matters such as information technology and records management ahead of a March vote on the next budget, an historically explosive subject.The Foster-Glocester Regional School District’s response: It will cost $1.2 million and take more than 80,000 hours of labor to review and redact nearly 2.5 million emails.
The Access to Public Records Act conflict adds a wrinkle to years of animosity between Ocean State parent-activists and school districts, teachers unions, local officials, police and pugnacious Attorney General Peter Neronha, which has largely focused on culture-war issues such as school curricula, gender identity and who has access to students.
This latest conflict also pits onetime allies against each other: taxpayer Laurie Gaddis Barrett and district counsel Greg Piccirilli, who together fought a health regulation that would allow Rhode Island to resume mask mandates without scientific evidence, in alleged violation of an agreement that ended parents’ lawsuit against COVID-19 school masking.
Barrett, known recently for lobbying to close a “passing the trash” loophole in state background checks that lets school employees accused of child-related misconduct easily move between districts, told Just the News she just wants to see “basic governance documents” denied by the district when she asked in December, prompting her January APRA request.
“Why aren’t shared-service agreements centrally maintained and readily accessible?” asked Barrett, who on X calls herself an “Unsolicited Accountability Partner for Elected Officials.” “Is this how public bodies price citizens out of oversight?”
Superintendent Renee Palazzo didn’t follow up on Barrett’s offer, during a Feb. 5 “hallway conversation,” to talk through her APRA request, according to Barrett.
“If their math is accurate, production would take decades of full-time work” and make compliance “impossible even if someone paid the bill,” she said. The district’s Feb. 18 response is “deliberately flawed,” turning a “request for contracts into an email dragnet” that didn’t even follow the explicit limitations in Barrett’s request.
Piccirilli, also known for getting teachers reinstated who were fired for refusing COVID vaccination, told Just the News that Barrett’s request was so confusing that “she can’t suddenly be surprised” about the estimates he gave her Wednesday.
“She professes to be an expert” on APRA “so she should know” how to compose an “understandable and reasonable” request, as required by the transparency law, Piccirilli said. Trying to divine Barrett’s meaning from ambiguous language “would get us in trouble.”
One of their novel disputes is about Barrett’s use of artificial intelligence to write the request, which Piccirilli blamed for the “patently absurd” estimates he gave her.
“What difference does it make if someone uses AI to draft public records requests?” Barrett told Just the News.
An auto-response from Superintendent Palazzo’s email said she’s out of the office, with no return date or backup contact.
