Clute daily sues Danbury schools

CLUTE — The Facts sued the Danbury Independent School District, challenging a closed door session the board conducted with two students as a violation of the state ’s open meetings law.

The board met in closed session with the students about their request to be allowed to distribute the December issue of the high school newspaper.

Administrators had refused to distribute the school paper because it was not reviewed beforehand by the principal. The issue contained articles about the consequences of teenage sexual activity, sexually transmitted diseases and teenage parenting, and editorials making abortion rights and anti-abortion arguments, said journalism teacher Kristi Piper.

Bill Cornwell, editor and publisher of The Facts, said a Facts’ reporter was ejected from the meeting after twice trying to explain to the school board officials that the executive session violated state law.

“Rounding up a group of hard-working journalism students to privately deliberate their appeal is not only spineless, it is against the law,” Cornwell said.

School Superintendent Eric Grimmett said the district believes it complied with all laws. He said the personnel exception to the Open Meetings Act applied to the meeting because students were complaining about administrators.

Charlie Daughtry, the newspaper’s attorney, disagreed.

The newspaper asked the court to rule the executive session was improper and require the district to revoke its decision denying the students ’ appeals and to order a new hearing.

Bill adds cumulative costs of repeat requests

AUSTIN — A bill proposed by state Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, would let a state agency or school district add fees for locating, compiling and copying public information if the agency has already fulfilled one or more requests from the same person during a calendar month totaling at least 50 pages.

Wentworth told the Associated Press he drafted the legislation after hearing that people were making several large requests and trying to create a clog in the system.

The state’s Public Information Act currently allows an agency to add charges for items such as labor and overhead if a request is for more than 50 pages, with a couple of exceptions. But the act doesn ’t allow an agency to add requests together.