| A Poem by Rudyard Kipling: |
| I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who. I send them over land and sea, I send them east and west; But after they have worked for me, I give them all a rest. I let them rest from nine till five, For I am busy then, As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea, For they are hungry men. But different folk have different views. I know a person small- She keeps ten million serving-men, Who get no rest at all! She sends'em abroad on her own affairs, From the second she opens her eyes- One million Hows, two million Wheres, And seven million Whys! |
It has often been said that Kipling was describing the six questions traditionally associated with good journalism. They are: who, what, when, where, how and why. For this series, I will add one more question: how much.
I recently received the following e-mail:
| “Mr. Butterly, In March, you published a Blog titled: “When is enough, enough.” Can you tell me if Dr. Williams is still consulting District 63? If so, does she have a contract? What is she doing? How many days has she worked? How much money have we paid for her services? Thank you…..” |
I told the E-mailer that I couldn’t answer the questions at this time but I would see what I could do. That’s when I decided to write a series of Blog postings on writing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
The series will be a free flowing process that will take a bit of time to complete. The rubric will be Kipling’s and Butterly’s seven questions. Our goal will be to answer the E-mailer’s five initial questions, and of course, any others that might develop as part of the investigation.
My ultimate goal is to teach you a disciplined and repeatable approach to investigating your School District’s activities, utilizing the Freedom of Information Act.
So, let’s end this post with the first question. What is FOIA?
Part two in a few days.
Cheers!
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