EVANSVILLE — A taxpayer has targeted the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. with hefty open record requests that echo a template used by mask and vaccine opponents elsewhere.
In other parts of the country, similar records requests have been the first step in attempting to change school policies on COVID 19-related mandates. Legal and education experts say the approach is based on an incorrect understanding of the law and has links to far-right conspiracy group QAnon.
The end goal of business owner Ken Colbert's record requests is unclear. He declined to talk more with the Courier & Press after an initial interview.
The organization Bonds for the Win promotes records requests as a way people opposed to school mandates can obtain information about the surety bonds some government agencies or officials carry as insurance. The idea is that school policy changes can be leveraged by citizen insurance claims over what they say is the officials' failure to fulfill their elected duties.
Wording and items asked for in Colbert's open records requests mirror some of the content in sample open records letters posted on Bonds for the Win's website.
Colbert, who owns Seek and Find Consignments shop in Evansville, told a reporter he is a concerned taxpayer. It's irrelevant, he said, that he no longer has children in school.
"Anybody has a legal authority to question their government," he said.
Between Oct. 28 and March 14, Colbert filed four open record requests with the EVSC asking for 46 items. Most of the requests are for document copies, including information related to surety bonds and federal COVID-19 relief funding for schools.
The Courier & Press obtained copies of Colbert's requests and the school corporation's response letters to him through its own records request after Colbert declined to provide them.
"They have not responded to me. Not one piece of information," Colbert said.
EVSC spokesman Jason Woebkenberg said administrative staff are still working on filling Colbert's requests.
Colbert's first requests focused on the EVSC's authority "to implement a face mask or vaccine mandate within the district." The policy, he wrote in one of the requests, was "blatantly contrary to Indiana state law."
The Indiana General Assembly passed a law last spring, overriding Gov. Eric Holcomb's veto, that voided local COVID-19 health restrictions. It removed the authority for that from local health officers and gave it to local elected officials during health emergencies — county councils, city councils and mayors.
However, the law does not address masks in schools. With the waning of COVID-19 cases, most Indiana school districts, including EVSC, have since scaled back mask policies from requirements to suggestions.
School officials are nowhere to be found in Indiana's law requiring certain public officials to have bonds.
"Public school officials are not listed" in Indiana Code 5-4-1-5.1b, said Pat Shoulders, the EVSC's attorney.
Terry Spradlin, executive director of the Indiana School Boards Association, said that is his organization's legal opinion, too.
Surety bonds are intended to address issues of fraud, Spradline said.
"Policy decisions by school boards based on regulations and guidance from the Indiana State Department of Health pertaining to COVID health and safety protocols are not a basis for claims of fraud," Spradlin said. "In normal circumstances, surety bonds are an insurance-like arrangement by which a third party agrees to cover losses from a public official’s fraud or financial misbehavior.
However, Spradlin said school boards in other states have recently seen claims against surety bonds from members of the public over masking policies.
"Most (if not all) requests or claims across the country are being dismissed as baseless, unsubstantiated claims," Spradlin said in an email.
Another section of Indiana law dealing with school corporation administrative functions applies to school and school corporation financial personnel who handle money, Shoulders said.
Colbert also asked EVSC for documentation related its use of Elementary and Secondary School Relief Fund (ESSER), along with "line item accounting and any repurposing" of the COVID relief grants.
The Indiana Department of Education must approve school districts' uses of ESSER money, and a spreadsheet of EVSC's approved ESSER uses is publicly available on the school corporation's website.
EVSC has been awarded $85 million, which must be used by fall 2024. To date it has used just over $20 million of it for items such as teacher and employee stipends and summer school expenses. Some of the approved stipends are part of a teacher retention strategy.
A section of Bonds for the Win's website asserts that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) controls use of ESSER money.
The Indiana Department of Education says that while school plans for reopening to in-person instruction do have to include how they will follow the CDC's guidance, that requirement comes from the U.S. Department of Education, which actually oversees ESSER spending.
Colbert said the EVSC is not being transparent with how it is using ESSER and that his requests to speak to the school board were denied.
"I always want to be respectful of anybody who tries to get information about school policies and procedures," said Chris Kiefer, president of the EVSC school board. "We want to be as transparent as possible."
He said the school board uses a town-hall process for hearing from the public. Residents who register ahead of time can bring questions or concerns to a three- school board member panel. School board members rotate participation in the town hall sessions.
"We have town hall meetings where we can have an open dialog with people as opposed to them just having three minutes to speak in the meeting," Kiefer said. "I want to have real conversations."
First-term EVSC school board member Ann Ennis ran on a platform of transparency with the public when she was elected in 2018.
"Use of ESSER funding is so controlled by layers and layers of government. The money is being used for good cause," she said.
Ennis said she has been frustrated over a lack of public interest in topics such as the school budget.
"We had people picketing because of masks and a perceived vaccine mandate that doesn't exist, but then when we had a budget hearing we got no one," she said. "That's a problem."
Ennis said that Colbert has her cell phone number but so far he has not taken the opportunity to meet with her.
"I'd be happy to sit down and talk to him," she said. "But he is not willing."
Colbert said he has a slate of candidates who will run for the four open EVSC school board seats this fall, but he declined to name them.
July 27 is the first day candidates can file petitions to run for school board in the general election, according to Indiana's election calendar.