A Rhode Island high school is restricting parents from accessing the curriculum of a teacher who openly mocked Charlie Kirk’s assassination by requiring an exorbitant fee.
A social studies teacher at Barrington Public Schools (BPS) was placed on leave in September after posting a video saying he had no sympathy for the Turning Point USA founder after he was killed. Now, a concerned parent tried to request information on what was taught in the teacher’s classroom only to be met with a fee of over $117,000, according to the Goldwater Institute.
“It should never cost $117,000 to see the curriculum materials of a single social studies teacher in a public school because those materials are already paid for by the taxpayer,” Nicole Solas, the mother who requested the records, said in a statement. “Barrington Public School District’s exorbitant fee weaponizes Rhode Island’s Access to Public Records Act to block access to public information about what students are being taught instead of simply handing over the materials free of charge.”
In Rhode Island, agencies may issue a “reasonable charge” for retrieving documents, which cannot exceed $15 per hour. BPS estimated the requested documents would take 7,735.5 hours to recover — almost an entire year — bringing the total cost to $117,130.50.
BPS did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Charlie Kirk, founder and executive director of Turning Point USA, speaks during a Turning Point PAC town hall at Dream City Church on June 06, 2024 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“This is a man who hated the LGBTQ community, who hated women’s rights, who hated democracy, who thought that he was a big man cause he went to college campuses and debated youth college students and thought he proved how tough he was with his words that he studied ahead of time,” the teacher said in a now-deleted TikTok video. “What a piece of garbage. This is what happens.”
Goldwater Institute sent a letter to district officials asking them to reconsider the fee it said “appears inflated by a series of unrealistic assumptions” and may therefore violate public records laws. (RELATED: Student-Run Show At Biden’s Alma Mater Under Fire For ‘Special Thanks’ To ‘Charlie Kirk’s Killer’)
“These are straightforward records that should be easy to produce, but rather than being transparent with the public, the district is hiding this information behind a prohibitive fee estimate,” the institute said.
BPS apparently claimed the task would require scanning 157 courses taught by the teacher over 15 years and spread across three different systems.
Kirk was known for starting dialogue with leftist students on college campuses to discuss controversial topics and find common ground. He was shot and killed during a campus speaking event at Utah Valley University in September.
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