23FC:0053: Debra Schiel-Larson/Indianola Community School District - Status Report

Date:
09/19/2024

Subject:
Debra Schiel-Larson/Indianola Community School District - Status Report 

The Iowa Public Information Board

On March 1, 2023, the Complainant, Debra Schiel-Larson, filed formal complaint 23FC:0053, alleging that the Indianola Community School District (District) violated Iowa Code chapters 21 and 22. 

Background

The Branding Committee

At the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year, the District determined it should assess whether members of the school community were interested in changing the District’s logo (and generally to the District’s brand). The District’s Superintendent, Ted Ihns, worked with a media relations company, The Donovon Group, to determine how to engage the school community to evaluate a possible change in the District’s logo and brand. The Donovon Group recommended that the District create a committee and advised the following regarding composition of this committee:

In addition, here's a list of positions I would recommend consideration of for a logo/branding committee:

▪ Staff (1-2 from each building)

▪ Coaches

▪ Parents (Mix of those who've grown up in Indianola + those who've lived elsewhere)

▪ Board member

▪ Retiree(s)

▪ Business owners/leaders

▪ Students

▪ Recent grads

You may not be able to have all of those groups represented, but I would aim for each so that you have a committee of 12–20.

The Superintendent and other District administrators worked to find people who would serve on this committee consistent with this recommendation. The Indianola School Board did not take any steps to appoint or otherwise approve members of this committee. Once the committee was created, it occasionally met and reported back to the Superintendent regarding the committee’s discussion. The committee did not report information or recommendations directly to the Board. Ultimately, the committee dissolved without recommending any changes be made to the District’s logo or brand. The Board took no action for any changes to the District’s logo or brand, and the District did not proceed with changing the District’s logo or brand.

The Request

As noted above, the District had been evaluating possible changes to the District’s logo and overall branding throughout the 2022-2023 school year. The Board had received periodic updates on the status of the process, with most of the updates related to hiring a third-party entity to assist the District with the logo and branding evaluation process. 

During the March 21, 2023, Regular Board Meeting, Superintendent Ihns provided an update on “the branding committee’s progress.” Superintendent Ihns stated that the committee held a meeting in early March and had received “the first tentative schematic designs back.” As part of the update from Superintendent Ihns, a Board member asked, “Can you send us what you have so we can see it?” to which Superintendent Ihns replied, “Yeah, I can share it out.”

Despite Superintendent Ihns’ statement that he would share the tentative designs with the School Board, the District maintains that there were no further updates to the Board on the rebranding effort after the March 21 meeting, and the Board never formally or informally considered options for the District’s logo or brand update; never voted to approve any updated logos or branding materials; and did not proceed with any steps related to a change to the District’s logo or brand after March 21, 2023. The District stated that it fully stopped any further assessment of whether a logo or brand change should be made in late March 2023. 

However, included in the agenda for the July 18, 2023, Board meeting was an agenda item related to branding guidelines. The District maintains that this item related to guidelines developed by the same consulting firm that had been working with the branding committee, but was unrelated to the work that the branding committee had been doing. The District states that the branding guidelines referenced in the July 18 meeting agenda relate to uniformity of the District’s branding, whereas the branding committee’s work dealt with potential rebranding and updates to the logo. However, in a March 2 press release regarding the brand committee’s efforts, which was provided to the Complainant, the District states that the branding committee was involved in maintaining uniformity in branding. 

On April 5, 2023, the Complainant submitted a public records request to the District for the following records related to the branding committee:

A digital copy of all records related to the Indianola Community School District’s Branding Effort. This includes but is not limited to original work on this topic prior to formation of the associated committee, all correspondence and documents, the school district’s consultant and their efforts, Branding Committee meeting packets, agendas, meeting minutes and records, . . . [and] the information that Superintendent Ted Ihns referenced recently at the Indianola Community School District’s Board meeting on March 21, 2023 with branding designs currently under consideration. Superintendent Ihns agreed to forward this information to the School Board members.

The stated timeframe for the request was from January 2, 2023, to the present. 

On April 17, 2023, Superintendent Ihns emailed the Complainant the records the District had determined were responsive and subject to disclosure. In his response, Superintendent Ihns stated that “any records that are confidential under state or federal law . . . have been redacted or otherwise not released.”

The Complainant sent a follow-up email to Superintendent Ihns stating that “[t]he information you provided to me in this file is substantially incomplete.” In her email, the Complainant also asked follow-up questions about her request for records, including (i) asking for the attachment referenced in an email included in the responsive records provided by the District, (ii) asking for the “current information” she requested in her request for records, (iii) asking for the “Branding Committee meeting packets, agendas, meeting minutes and records, etc.,” and (iv) asking for “the update” that had been requested by the Indianola School Board.

Following the email exchange, the Complainant requested a meeting with Superintendent Ihns. On April 26, 2023, Superintendent Ihns, the Complainant, and the Complainant’s husband met to discuss the request for records. During that meeting, the Complainant requested additional clarification regarding the confidentiality of certain records, and Superintendent Ihns indicated that draft or tentative documents are not subject to disclosure.

The Complaint

The Complainant alleges that in responding to the request, the District violated Chapter 22 in two ways. First, the Complainant alleges that the records released did not include any of the attachments referenced in the emails the District released to her.[1] Second, the Complainant alleges that although she requested records from January 2, 2023, to the present, the District failed to provide any records dated after March 2, 2023. 

The District’s Response to the Complaint

Regarding the alleged violation of chapter 22, the District maintains that the additional materials that were withheld from the Complainant were confidential draft materials or trade secrets under section 22.7(65). Further, the District states that the dates of the documents that were provided to the Complainant only extend to March 2, 2023, because the rebranding effort was abandoned shortly after the March 21 Board meeting, and no public records were created between March 2 and the disbanding of the branding committee after the March 21 Board meeting. 

Chapter 22

The District relied on § 22.7(65), the “draft documents” exception, to support withholding the documents referenced in the complaint. However, this exception cannot account for the total absence of responsive documents between March 2, 2023, and the end of March, when the District states that all rebranding efforts ceased. Further, it is not clear from the facts that the rebranding efforts did in fact cease at the end of March, as evidenced by the July 25 Board agenda item dealing with consistency of branding. IPIB accepted the Complaint on August 17, 2024, to work with the parties to further investigate the scope of records withheld and determine whether additional records exist that should have been or could be disclosed.

Informal Resolution

On March 21, 2024, the IPIB approved the Informal Resolution Report, which laid out the following terms:

Therefore, the parties agree to resolve the complaint pursuant to the following terms:

l. The District shall identify and collect all public records it possesses that fit the description of those the Complainant requested in her original request, subject to the following limitation:

a. The parties acknowledge and agree that the Respondent is not obligated to search for, identify, and collect any records that were created before January 2, 2022, or after September 7, 2023.

2. If, after identifying and collecting all public records as described in paragraph 1, the District wishes to withhold one or more of those records as confidential, the District shall provide unredacted copies of the records it wishes to withhold to IPIB staff and state the basis of the claimed confidentiality of each record it wishes to withhold. However, if the claimed confidentiality of a record is based on attorney-client privilege, the District is not obligated to provide that record to IPIB staff.

3. Upon receipt of a record claimed to be confidential, IPIB staff shall review the record, determine whether the District may withhold it as confidential, and communicate its determination to the District.

4. The District shall release all records it has identified and collected as described in paragraph 1 to the Complainant, except that

a. the District may withhold records that IPIB staff determined to be confidential as described in paragraph 3; and

b. The District may withhold attorney-client privileged records.

5. Upon receipt of the records, the Complainant shall send an email to the District and IPIB staff stating the following:

a. That she received and reviewed the records; and

b. That the alleged violation of chapter 22 complained of in formal complaint 23FC:0053 is hereby resolved.

Upon formal approval of the informal resolution, IPIB staff conferred with the parties to determine how best to resolve the complaint. During these discussions, it became apparent that the search terms and methodology the District had used to identify documents responsive to the Complainant’s request were incomplete and would likely not have yielded a complete response to the request even if the District had not chosen to withhold any of the documents.

Upon learning this, IPIB staff recommended that the Complainant and District agree on a list of search terms that would yield a complete response. The Complainant suggested a list of search terms and the parties identified a limited number of individuals whose computers and emails would be searched for responsive documents. However, the District reported that searching these terms yielded an unwieldy number of potentially responsive documents that would need to be reviewed to determine if they fit the description of documents that the Complainant had requested via natural language.

Records Provided - Informal Resolution

On May 3, 2024, the District submitted records to IPIB staff.

On May 21, 2024, IPIB staff provided all documents provided by the District to Ms. Schiel-Larson.

On June 13, 2024, Ms. Schiel-Larson stated that she did not agree that she had received all records pursuant to her request. On June 27, Ms. Shiel-Larson provided a specific list of missing records. She stated that the request was for the District’s Branding “Effort,” which she believed was not inclusive only of the Branding Committee; the earliest records were November 2022 and the Informal Resolution included the timeframe of January 2022 through September 2023; she requested all communications and not just the branding committee; and no minutes or materials from the committee meetings had been included in the documents. 

On August 12, the School provided the following additional search:

To/From: All Board Members district email addresses and Superintendent Ted Ihn’s district email address (NOT from:(copier-no-reply@indianola.k12.ia.us)) and (from:(*@indianola.k12.ia.us))

Date Range: January 2, 2022, through September 7, 2023

Search Terms: brand OR branding OR logo

We are hopeful this will pull any emails that would be sent to Board members from members of the public related to the District’s brand or logo. In your email dated June 13, Ms. Schiel-Larson, you stated this was information you were requesting. The District continues to take the position that emails from members of the public to Board members are beyond the scope of the initial request, which was for records “related to the Indianola Community School District’s Branding Effort,” as this request generally would not include public comments that were received by the Board members. However, the District is agreeable to performing this search to resolve the matter.

 Once this email search is performed and we have an idea of how many emails the searched “pulled,” I will follow-up with both of you to share with you that information. I will then ask for confirmation that, if the District reviews and redacts any confidential information (i.e., student or employee information) from the emails generated by this search and releases those emails, that this would formally resolve this matter. The District is willing to try every reasonable avenue to resolve this matter.

On August 27, 2024, the District reported that the search resulted in over 500 emails and was concerned the review would take more than 15 hours. The District believed it had already provided a search and had provided all records in response to Ms. Schiel-Larson’s request.

On September 10, IPIB staff spoke with the District regarding the emails identified.

On September 16, the District agreed to review the 500+ emails identified to determine if there are any additional records within the group that should have been provided. These will be provided to IPIB by October 11. In response, Ms. Schiel-Larson stated she does not believe this review will resolve her complaint.

IPIB staff is providing this update to the Board and seeking guidance in addressing this matter. It is IPIB staff’s understanding the parties will be in attendance to address the Board and answer any questions the Board may have about the status of this Complaint.

Respectfully submitted,

Erika Eckley

[1] When the Complainant brought this issue to the District’s attention, the District provided one of the referenced attachments to the Complainant, the “Branding Article” attachment. The District stated that it had inadvertently omitted the “Branding Article” from the documents released to the Complainant and that this document was the only attachment not provided initially that was a public record subject to release.