Deeply Disturbing or Profoundly Weird: Round Rock ISD and the Texas Public Information Act
On June 10th, I sent a Texas Public Information Act request to Round Rock ISD for "All records relating to the disinvitation of author Phil Bildner from speaking or presenting at Round Rock ISD as had been planned for September 2016." (Note: The link there is for your reference; it was not in my request.)
On August 4th, I received the files. The delay was partially due to vacations and shortened hours at the district over the summer. I think that they probably filled it as quickly as possible for such a vague request.
I have now reviewed the files. The story seems a bit more complex than it's been portrayed thus far. Additionally, while there are no smoking guns here, the files are in some ways more interesting in what is not included. Let me explain:
The very first document—and the only one that isn't formatted badly—is the official statement that Round Rock put out on June 8th or 9th. Above that is the phrase "Please see our statement below." It's not clear if that's from the original statement or if it's directed at me. Is Round Rock recognizing that I'm investigating them and preemptively attaching their official PR response or was it merely viewed as a responsive document? I'm leaning towards the former for the following reason: The official statement is the only document from this year. Everything else is emails from late September / early October 2015. There are no other official statements, there are no letters from outside, there are no emails to or from Mr. Bildner in 2016, nothing. We know these communications exist; Mr. Bildner and outside organizations reacting to the disinvitation have discussed them, and no-one's challenged their accounts. But they're not included here; only the official statement is.
Even weirder, the actual decision to disinvite Mr. Bildner is included nowhere in these emails. Lots of discussion supporting their eventual rationale is, but look at the dates: All of the emails are from September and October of 2015. In December of 2015, they signed a contract inviting him back for the visit that would eventually be cancelled. Either the decision to disinvite him came after that or they signed a contract that they had no intention of honoring. It wasn't until May 27th in 2016 that they wrote him and canceled. Regardless of when it occurred, either the decision to disinvite him was not written down or the decision to disinvite him was considered unrelated to his disinvitation and thus not provided to me. The actual email disinviting him is apparently also unrelated to his disinvitation. Or, possibly, all of those later, controversial documents have been deleted and only these old emails remain. All of these options are either deeply disturbing or profoundly weird.
Finally, in the emails I can see at least three controversies or objections surrounding Mr. Bildner's booktalks:
The account of the first of these controversies—a parent's objection prior to the 2015 talks and subsequent Twitter argument with Mr. Bildner—is clearly fragmentary. It was clearly an ongoing saga by the time of the earliest email released to me. But it's officially not why he was disinvited from a return visit, so presumably Round Rock doesn't consider it related to his disinvitation, so it didn't send me any other emails about it; I only know about it because it happened to be discussed in the same emails as the official reason for his disinvitation.
A second objection was raised regarding the book George in specific. From what emails I have in front of me, only a single person raised that objection and it was ignored by the administration except for a later comment that they had no problem with George. But, of course, because that's officially not why Mr. Bildner was disinvited, there may very well be other emails on the subject that have been withheld from me because they’re officially considered unrelated to the disinvitation.
The third objection is the official one, which I presume I have been provided a complete record of, the fact that all of it occurs a month or two prior to Mr. Bildner being invited to return and more than half a year prior to his disinvitation notwithstanding.
So, this is where I stand: I have requested everything related to Mr. Bildner's disinvitation. Someone at Round Rock has reviewed my request, intuited that I'm looking for the behind-the-scenes reasons, and given me (1) the official statement of their reason, and (2) a selection of documents that are limited to the initial internal discussion of what would become their official reason and nothing else, including the eventual decision and the disinvitation itself. It’s impossible to tell if there were other factors that may have even subconsciously played a role in the decision to disinvite Mr. Bildner because anything that doesn’t match the official narrative is officially irrelevant and therefore doesn’t have to be disclosed. Without filing multiple follow-up requests to specifically dig into the loose threads and massive blank spaces disclosed by this response, I can only come to a few cursory and unobjectionable conclusions regarding this incident. And perhaps that was the point.
