Info requests exhaust public info officer

The insurgency against the Cupertino Union School District leadership claimed a casualty this month when longtime public information officer Jeremy

Nishihara abruptly jumped ship. Several factors prompted him to leave his job of 13 years, Nishihara told IA: He turned 40 this year, he wanted to carve out more time for his family (he has two elementary-school-age children), and the nature of his job changed. An onslaught of queries from the public, in the form of Public Records Act requests, forced him to shift focus.

“The PRAs became my whole life,” he said.

Suspicious residents have sought to sniff out evidence of conspiracy and wrongdoing in Cupertino Union, the largest elementary district in Santa Clara County. Their discontent, born in the staff overhaul at West Valley Elementary School last year and stoked by controversy over the Vallco shopping center redevelopment, has targeted Superintendent Wendy

Gudalewicz and the five-member school board.

A cadre of residents has sent 64 records requests since July 2015, amounting to hundreds of thousands of pages and costing $54,000 in legal fees alone — not including fees for 15 pending requests. Factoring in staff time and the contract for a PR firm to help with public information, the costs exceed $200,000, Gudalewicz said. While the records can be sorted electronically, someone needs to comb through each page to guard against releasing private information. Among the requests: every phone record for every district-issued phone and every district email mentioning the word “iPad.”

Ironically, or perhaps not surprisingly, Nishihara’s exit has generated more demands from folks now angry over the district quickly naming former Principal

Jeffrey Bowman to take over information and technology, which Nishihara also oversaw. Critics argue that Gudalewicz violated policy by filling the job without posting it or conducting a search.

“I believe the hiring to be crony hiring,” resident Randy Shingai wrote IA in an email. He’s sent eight information requests since mid-September.

For her part, Gudalewicz said, “I’m very unhappy we lost an excellent employee.”