More than 600 parents recently received a letter from Lake Travis Independent School District informing them that Lakeway resident David Lovelace submitted a public information request Aug. 17 seeking the release of “any and all copies of photographs and media distributed by the district between January 1, 2009, until present.”

The district sent the letter out to inform them of their right to approve or deny the release of photographs and other media of their children. Any student whose parent did not respond to the letter would be subject to the request. Parents whose children were not subject to the request did not receive letters from the district.
“I am writing to notify you that the Lake Travis Independent School District has received a Public Information Act request, and that information responsive to the request includes a photograph or photographs of your child,” LTISD attorney Susan Bohn wrote.
Marco Alvarado, LTISD director of communications, media and community relations, said the request required the input of the superintendent’s office, deputy superintendent’s office, legal department, communications department, business and financial services, curriculum and instruction, technology and information services, human resources, food and nutrition services, maintenance and operations, and transportation. Principals, various teachers and support staff members also contributed to fulfilling the request, Alvarado said.
Lovelace’s wife, Melissa, referred questions to attorney Bill Aleshire at Riggs, Aleshire & Ray.
Aleshire contended that his client’s request did not specify that David Lovelace sought images of children.
“The district has made a rather nasty implication that my client wanted photos of students to post on his Web site, which is extremely offensive to my client,” Aleshire said.
He said that district officials were casting suspicion on the nature of the request and possible uses of the information because of Lovelace’s criticism of the district’s proposed tax increase.
“I consider this to be a cheap shot by the school district to undermine David Lovelace while he is challenging their huge tax increase,” Aleshire said.
In an e-mail to the Lake Travis View, Lovelace’s comments echoed his attorney’s.
“The district is at it again. Let’s see this for what it is: retaliation, in a poor attempt to discredit me for speaking out against them. Is their incompetence a good use of our tax dollars?” he wrote.
Lovelace and his attorney in a letter to the district Sept. 11 also said they were not seeking Family Education Rights and Privacy Act-protected photos and media, so they thought the district could have supplied them without contacting parents to get their consent.
In their letter they stated that they had included in the request an invitation to discuss the scope of the inquiry, but indicated that Bohn had not contacted them directly before sending the notice out to parents.
District officials stated Tuesday that their representatives received an e-mail from Aleshire that day in which he revised the request.
“Although the district does not believe that the initial request was unclear, it recognizes that Mr. Lovelace’s attorney has now revised his request so as not to seek the photographs of children,” district officials wrote in an e-mail response. “In subsequent conversations with Mr. Lovelace’s attorney, he clarified first that Mr. Lovelace would like only those photographs of children whose parents have not objected to their release, and then ‘clarified that he was not asking for pictures of students.’”
Aleshire said he also was surprised that the district put this effort into gathering material that the district had disseminated.
“Of all the issues I’ve heard about the release of public information it is truly amazing the school district would make this kind of deal about copies that have already been released to the public. It’s a sad state of affairs that we have this sort of controversy over information that should be and are easily and readily available,” he said.
During the superintendent’s update at the LTISD board’s regular meeting Sept. 8, school board members, district administrators and Bohn discussed this recent request as well as the history of Lovelace’s 4,070 public information requests to the district since 2005.
“This really makes me mad. It’s a very difficult thing to have to be under siege for this,” board President Susan Tolles said. “I’m sorry to all the taxpayers that you have had to waste all your money on this.”
“It is a distraction [to the district]. It’s a morale killer. It needs to stop,” board member Alan Williams said.
Under the Texas Public Information Act, governmental agencies are prohibited from asking requestors why they seek information or how they intend to use it.
“We have no way of knowing why he wants this information, “ Bohn said at the board meeting.
“It leaves the question of what the intent may be,” Superintendent Dr. Rocky Kirk said.
Aleshire said his client is entitled to the information and the intent is not the issue.
“It’s not relevant. People are entitled to get information so they can use it to try to control their government. That’s what the Public Information Act is all about. The courts have said so, and the statute has said so,” he said.
District officials said they have met their requirements under the law.
“The district intends to continue to comply with state and federal law in responding to the requests of Mr. Lovelace and any other requestors, and will continue to honor the wishes of parents who have directed the district to withhold the directory of their children from disclosure to third parties,” district officials said.
(Editor’s note: There was a typographical error in the headline of the print edition of the Lake Travis View that gave the impression that Mr. Lovelace had resent the request, rather than withdraw the request. We apologize for the error and will publish a correction in the next edition of the newspaper.)