Litchfield Holds Nine FOIA Requests Under New AI Verification Guidance

Litchfield Community School District #12 Board of Education | August 18, 2026

Article Summary: Superintendent Dr. Kelly McClain told the Litchfield school board on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026, that she has received nine additional Freedom of Information Act requests from a single requester, has invoked new guidance allowing her to verify by telephone that a requester is not an automated system, and has not fulfilled the requests.

FOIA Requests Key Points:

• Nine additional requests came from the same source, each seeking information about a different vendor.
• McClain said new FOIA guidance allows her to call to confirm a requester is not AI; she called earlier that week and had not heard back.
• She told the board she is not responding to the requests at this time and is documenting the process.
• Several other area superintendents are receiving requests from the same source, she said.

LITCHFIELD — Superintendent Dr. Kelly McClain told the Litchfield Community Unit School District No. 12 Board of Education on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026, that she has received nine additional Freedom of Information Act requests from a single requester and has not fulfilled them, citing guidance that permits her to verify first that the requests came from a person rather than an automated system.

“I’ve received nine additional FOIA requests from the data branch, all asking for different vendors,” McClain said. “I did go back to the new FOIA guidance which does allow me to call to confirm that they are not AI. I did call earlier this week the number. I have yet to hear back from that request.”

She told the board she is not responding while that verification is outstanding, and that she will document the process. “We’ll make sure that I’m checking that it is just the data branch that is doing that,” she said, adding that several superintendents in the area are receiving requests from the same source.

FOIA requests appeared as a standing line on the printed agenda, listed under the superintendent’s report. The approved minutes record that “FOIA requests were answered and completed,” which sits alongside McClain’s statement on the floor that the nine newer requests have not been fulfilled. The two accounts may describe different sets of requests; the record does not say, and the point has been flagged.

McClain did not cite a statutory section for the guidance she relied on, and no legal authority, written procedure or correspondence relating to the requests was included in the board packet. The name of the requester — rendered in the recording as “the data branch” — is not written anywhere in the district’s documents, and the spelling has not been confirmed.

Nothing in the record describes what information the nine requests seek beyond McClain’s statement that each asks about a different vendor, and the district has published no log of them. The board asked no questions on the item, and no motion was taken; the superintendent’s report is an information item under the board’s standing agenda.

The district maintains a FOIA page on its website, and the board’s policy manual revisions taken up the same night included several exhibits dealing with board records maintenance requirements, though the district’s materials do not connect those revisions to the pending requests.