LAKEVILLE — Retrieving, reviewing and supplying 770 emails in response to a public records request takes an exorbitant amount of time, attention and money, according to Freetown-Lakeville School District Superintendent Alan Strauss.

Strauss shared that the number of public records requests flooding into the central office of the Freetown Lakeville School district is “out of control” at the School Committee’s Wednesday, Sept. 4 meeting. 

Over the last few months, the district has received “more public records requests than you could imagine,” he said. Responding to these requests, as required by law, can mean downloading hundreds of emails through the IT department, redacting them and sending them to legal counsel for review. This takes hours, he said. 

During the meeting, Strauss directed sharp comments at Freetown Town Administrator Deborah Pettey, who he alleged filed a public records request under the pseudonym “Jim Jones” and asked for information related to his health. 

Pettey explained that she filed the request using an old work email with the name “Jim Jones” in the signature line because her primary personal email was not working at the moment. Emails show that she alerted the School Committee that she would be sending a public records request. The response to the public records request was addressed to “Ms. Pettey” as well as “Mr. Jones.” 

Pettey also stated she was not seeking any information related to the superintendent’s health records, but was asking for time sheet records from when the superintendent had been absent from work. 

“I wanted to know the amount of time you had taken off,” Pettey stated during the school committee meeting, “because we had paid a lot of money for stipends for you to be out.” 

The school’s legal counsel denied the request, citing that the records “implicate “confidential medical information.”

Pettey said she sent the public records request after multiple attempts to obtain information had not been fruitful. “I wasn’t asking for anything to do with your health,” she explained to Strauss during the meeting, noting later: “My concern is Freetown taxpayers. It’s unfortunate that Mr. Strauss feels attacked by me.” 

Stipends were given to members of the central office, who took on some of the superintendent’s workload last year while Strauss was undergoing cancer treatment.