Freedom of Information comes with a fee.
At least for one North Okanagan elementary school's parent advisory committee (PAC), it does.
Armstrong Elementary School's PAC is fuming over receiving a bill for $1,560 in fees from K虛wsaltktn茅ws ne Secwepemc煤l鈥檈cw School District No. 83 North Okanagan-Shuswap after submitting a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, under the B.C. Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA), asking for what it calls "basic school-level data: budget allocations, actual spending, staffing assignments, student enrolment."
Instead of transparency, raged the PAC, the district waited until the last possible moment to respond 鈥� and with only an invoice. Their estimate: 55 hours of accounting work, totalling $1,560 in fees to locate and prepare documents that the PAC says should already exist and should already be public.
The school district took $90 off the bill, giving for free the first three hours at $30 per hour.
"It鈥檚 outrageous that parents need to fundraise for school programs and then pay again just to see where the rest of the money is going," said the PAC in a letter to The Morning Star.
鈥淭axpayers fund the school district. We have every right to see how that money is spent.鈥�
The $1,560 fee, said the PAC, is equivalent to multiple classrooms worth of school supplies. And if PAC were to pay SD83 for the publicly available data, those funds would come from parent-led fundraising meant to support programs for students, not district administration.
Under FIPPA, public bodies may charge fees for time-consuming requests. But PAC members say their request wasn鈥檛 complicated or time-consuming.
鈥淭hese numbers already exist in a table. In any accounting software, you run a query and export the spreadsheet. It should take under an hour,鈥� said an unnamed parent "familiar with modern accounting software."
AES PAC noted that the entire request is for spreadsheet outputs from software queries. Under FIPPA, public bodies may not charge at all for programming and running queries.
"We鈥檙e not asking for secrets, we鈥檙e asking for totals. This should be the kind of information they have at their fingertips," said the PAC.
The PAC said it's been told by the school district it will take more than a full week of full-time work by a chartered professional accountant to compile the data, which did not sit well with the parents.
鈥淚f SD83 needs 55 hours to find basic numbers, it鈥檚 not just a transparency issue, it鈥檚 a total failure.鈥�
The requested data is needed to evaluate long-term equity in school funding and support. PAC members argue that this type of information should already be published as part of the district鈥檚 regular financial reporting.
The PAC submitted the records request on May 20, 2025. Under FIPPA, the district was required to respond by late June. But instead of data, SD83 sent only an invoice on the final day of the response period, to which, the PAC requested the following:
鈥� A breakdown of how the 55 hours were calculated;
鈥� Immediate release of simple data (e.g., enrolment and staffing);
鈥� A fee waiver under section 75(5) of FIPPA, due to clear public interest.
In its letter of response, the school board said, "Section 75 of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act permits a public body to assess and charge a fee for certain costs associated with responding to access requests. Given the scope and breadth of your request, we have determined that it is appropriate to charge a fee to conduct further work processing (i.e. locating, retrieving, producing, preparing and copying records) your request."
This is not the first time SD83 has faced criticism over transparency.
Families protested in June over an abrupt administrative reassignment at Armstrong Elementary. The district, said the PAC, refused to share its rationale or supporting data. Back in 2016, when SD83 tried to close Armstrong Elementary, said the parents, similar financial questions about school-level financial information went unanswered.
Now, with a $1,560 price tag on public data, the parents are again asking what the district is trying to hide.
"When access to information costs over $1,500, how many parents will be able to afford it?" said the PAC. "More importantly, should they have to?"
The Morning Star has reached out to the school district for comment.
