All records of or belonging to the school district are public records and available for public examination and reproduction, except those records which are defined by law as confidential and those records which are copyrighted.  Copyrighted materials of or belonging to the district are available for examination. Board records include board agendas, agenda attachments, minutes, written communications addressed to the Board of Directors or a board officer.  Board records also include all other records distributed to all board members. A communication addressed to an individual board member and not distributed to all board members and not generated as part of a district board member’s official duties does not belong to the district and is not a public record.

Confidential Records are those records required or permitted by law to be confidential.

Public records are available for public examination during regular office hours. Persons wishing to review the school district’s public records shall contact the board secretary and make arrangements for viewing.  The board secretary shall make arrangements for anyone to view the records as soon as practicable, depending on the nature of the request. Examination of records shall be done under the supervision of the district employee responsible for maintaining the records being examined or by that person’s designee.  Confidential Records are not available for examination by the public.

Original or reproduced copies of public records will be made available during office hours upon request.  Persons wanting copies may be assessed a fee for the copy. Such copies will be available for a fee of 10 cents for each standard page, except as otherwise provided.  Except as permitted by law, copyrighted materials or trademarked materials shall not be reproduced. Persons wanting a compilation of data may be assessed a fee for the time of the school district employee to compile such data.  Requests that take longer than one hour of District personnel time will assess a fee and must be prepaid. This cost is in addition to the per page reproduction cost. Records defined by law as confidential records shall only be viewed or copied upon receipt of written permission by the board secretary from the person or entity whose confidential records are being requested.

Iowa law does allow that persons requesting public records may be charged a fee for the actual costs of the retrieval and review of records, supervision of the examination of records and for copying records.

Examples of actual costs for public record requests to Dallas Center-Grimes CSD may include:

• Copies: there is no charge for the first 20 pages of photocopies. After that, there is a charge of 10 cents per single-sided sheet and 20 cents per double-sided sheet.
• A per hour charge, based on the hourly rate of employees is, for data retrieval, document review and other work related to fulfilling a public records request.
• Postage will be charged, at cost, if it exceeds $1.

Please note that it is the practice of Dallas Center-Grimes CSD to waive the cost for one hour of work to comply with a public records request.

If there is any cost associated with a request, DCG will provide an estimate of the cost to the requester. If the estimate is agreed to, the district will require payment when the public records are provided or in advance if the estimate is more than $100. In addition, work will not begin on the request until the estimate is approved or paid by the requestor, depending upon the amount. A requestor may always amend his/her request in order to lessen or even eliminate any cost.