Hinsdale, Ill. (ECWd) –
During their May 2025, meeting, the Board of Trustees of Hinsdale Township High School District 86 voted to approve two Student Residency Settlements, which waived any fees for these students for the 2024-2025 school year.
While this is not something we would typically write about, what happened after the board approved the settlements is why we are writing.
A local newspaper reporter submitted a FOIA request for copies of those settlements, and the district denied the FOIA request (falsely) claiming they were “student records” and prohibited from release.
We later filed a FOIA request for the same records, and the district provided them to us, as they should have provided to the previous requester.
Settlements are listed in Section 2.20 of the Freedom of Information Act as records subject to release to the public:
“Sec. 2.20. Settlement and severance agreements. All settlement and severance agreements entered into by or on behalf of a public body are public records subject to inspection and copying by the public, provided that information exempt from disclosure under Section 7 of this Act may be redacted.”
While we appreciate the district complying with our request for records, we wonder why they would deny the same records to the other FOIA requester.
We suggest this board of trustees review its Freedom of Information Act policy and ensure its FOIA Officers are properly complying with records requests.
