Public schools, as public entities, are subject to the North Carolina Public Records Act (read this carefully).

North Carolina’s public records laws are a bit unique because they apply to “any record created in the transaction of public business”, meaning that the medium doesn’t matter. A sticky note, email, or text message on your personal phone can all be subjected to the Public Records Act. Districts are responsible for archiving data in their control, such as email, finance, and HR data. This means that most districts run an email archiving service like Google Vault in order to keep copies of all emails for inspection. However, if employees generate public records, they are responsible for maintaining them and then surrendering them – even if it’s from a personal device or even a sticky note.

There are important exceptions to what is considered a public record. The title, salary, and promotion date of an employee is public (many newspapers print them for districts and universities). However, evaluation data for an employee is not public. Student data is never public, except for the stated directory information (though under FERPA a parent may request data on their own child). In North Carolina, personal communications are not public records, even if sent using a school account (so inviting people to go to a bar on a Friday afternoon is not a public record nor is a Google Chat about Tiger King - though a Google Chat about a student may be disclosed under FERPA). In addition, records are not public records once their utility has elapsed (for example, a meeting reminder isn’t a public record once the meeting has occurred - though the agenda and minutes are). However, a majority of the written communication created in schools does indeed fall under the public records act.

Employees are responsible for maintaining their own records that are created outside of school channels. For example, two school board members texting each other during a meeting would be subject to public inspection - the board members would be required to turn over those texts if requested, even if they are using personal phones.

When public records requests come in, a lawyer will typically review the request, pull the relevant records in cooperation with the CTO, and redact anything that needs to be redacted prior to release. Some of these requests may be significant - some newspapers have outstanding requests for “all emails”. It is never the duty of the CTO, and a serious breach of professional ethics, to review or release public records without following district processes or consulting legal counsel. The CTO’s responsibility is to ensure that districts have systems in place to store and retrieve records as required.

The Department of Cultural Resources maintains responsibility for developing a records retention schedule that defines what districts must keep and for how long. An additional schedule has been created by NCDCR and NCDPI for school records.