Grand Prairie News received an anonymous tip about discrimination that was allegedly happening at the staff level within the Grand Prairie ISD, and that grievances, that may name a very high level employee, have been filed within the district. Upon receiving this information, Grand Prairie News filed a Open Records Request. The following was requested:
“Any records, claims/reports, or grievances where a current or former GPISD staff member has reported any cases of discrimination by other Grand Prairie ISD employees towards current or former staff members from 2019 through 2022. Please provide those reports including any discipline or final outcomes based on those incidents.
Basically… any reports of GPISD staff reporting incidents of discrimination against other GPISD former or current employees. I want those reports.”
We received the following from GPISD
Records for a relatively short window of time, 2019 through 2022, were requested. One would assume that since there has not been a high turnover in the human resources department that someone in HR would have a pretty good idea as to any accusations of discrimination in the district and could simply email them to public information officer Sam Buchmeyer.
However, Grand Prairie ISD is asking for $406,386 to comply with the request. If the numbers are broken down to reflect teacher pay, Mr. Buchmeyer is essentially saying it will take 6 entry level GPISD teachers making 60K per year a little over a year to figure out if GPISD has a discrimination problem and to provide the files pertaining to the open records request.
This is a first of its kind for Grand Prairie News. GPISD should be ashamed of how it has handled this open records request.
We are kindly requesting that GPISD expedite their open record requests and respond in a more efficient and affordable manner.
