Public Information Act

Purpose: To promote government transparency by giving the general public access to public records. The district does charge a fee to produce records under the PIA. Comal ISD’s current redaction labor rate is $15.00 per hour to locate, compile and physically redact confidential information from the records plus a 20% overhead charge. Additionally, if the requestor is provided with copies, the requestor will be billed $.10 per page. If the total cost of completing the work to fulfill a request exceeds $100.00, the district will require a deposit before processing the request.

Who can access: Anyone (citizens, media, corporations, researchers). 

Access what: General district records, emails, or data. Student PII is strictly redacted by law. 

Timeline: Up to 10 calendar days to comply. 

**FERPA is federal law, while the PIA is state law. Under the Supremacy Clause, FERPA completely pre-empts the PIA. If a member of the public files a PIA request for a record that contains student information, the district cannot release the student's personally identifiable information, as doing so would violate federal law and jeopardize the district's federal funding.** 

**Under Texas Government Code § 552.114 (and historical OAG Open Records Decisions), a Texas school district can automatically redact FERPA-protected student records from a PIA request without requesting an attorney general opinion.** 

**Comal ISD does not have an internal police department. All campus SRO’s are employed by their respective police agencies and are not employees of Comal ISD. Additionally, Comal ISD does not maintain any law enforcement records.**