(The Center Square) – Georgia's largest school district has quoted a community activist nearly $40,000 to fulfill a public records request – an estimate a First Amendment attorney calls "crazy high" and potentially out of scope.
The price quote came from Gwinnett County Public Schools after Tori Branum, of Dublin, Ga., filed a formal request for personnel records and internal communications concerning the hiring of teacher Nishat Kayum. School district staff wrote that the request would require 856 hours of labor, at $46.22 per hour, to review and redact more than 51,000 records. That amounts to roughly five months of full-time work.
Branum is a self-described "anti-Sharia" community activist who often rails on social media against the spread of Islam. She told The Center Square she wanted to know why a suburban high school hired an English language arts teacher who wears a niqab – a Muslim veil covering most of her face.
Citing the Georgia Open Records Act, Branum filed her request June 10, a day after Duluth High School posted a welcome message for new teacher Kayum on its Facebook page. An accompanying photo showed Kayum in a hijab and niqab, leaving only her eyes and part of her forehead visible.
Branum said she can't understand how a teacher can teach students when they can’t see her facial expressions or lips moving.
"That’s just ludicrous to me," she said. "I was like, I wonder what her credentials are to teach ELA."
The school district gave Branum part of what she asked for, a digital copy of the teacher’s personnel file, for a cost of just $29. The records show the teacher is properly credentialed, with a bachelor's degree and certified by the Georgia Professional Standards Commission.
But the price tag for the balance of her request, for internal communications about the teacher's hiring, was $39,669.
Branum, who lost a Republican primary bid for Georgia's 12th Congressional District last month, said the fee is designed to make her quit. She said Gwinnett is stonewalling because, for the past six months, she's been posting against Islam on X, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
"I think there’s probably stuff in there that they don’t want me to see, because it could reach a lot of people," Branum said.
60 seconds per page
Georgia law doesn't allow government officials to withhold records from people whose motivations they disagree with. A written statement emailed by Gwinnett schools spokesman Bernard Watson said, "The district did not increase the price estimate, and the estimate was not influenced in any way by Ms. Branum's personal views or politics, whatever those are."
Interim Superintendent Al Taylor declined an interview request, and Board of Education Chairwoman Tarece Johnson-Morgan did not respond to phone or email messages.
Spokesman Watson said the price estimate was based on the volume of records and the time required to review and redact them. Branum requested "email correspondence and internal memos from Duluth High School administration concerning the hiring, onboarding, or public introduction of this teacher," during the timeframe of August 2024 to June 10, 2026. A search for emails returned 51,381 items – about 7.8 gigabytes of material, Watson said in an email. The district calculated 60 seconds to review each page.
"Gwinnett County Public Schools is required by law to process open records requests based on the exact search terms and parameters submitted by the requester," Watson said. "The district cannot independently narrow or reinterpret those terms."
A government transparency advocate who reviewed the school system's response said both the price, and the amount of records Gwinnett says it has to cull through to answer the request, seem out of line.
"It seems like a staggeringly high number of documents they're estimating," Clare Norins, a board member of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation and director of the University of Georgia School of Law’s First Amendment Clinic, told The Center Square. "Obviously, $40,000 is a crazy high amount. Nobody can afford to pay that."
While governments can’t obstruct records over ideological differences, Branum’s price quote highlights other barriers. Georgia’s access law lays out myriad exemptions – such as home addresses, home phone numbers, bank records, medical records, social security numbers, trade secrets, and ongoing investigations – then allows governments to charge by the hour to pore through records page by page to mark out any exempt material.
Norins said those 51,000 records are probably way beyond the scope of what Branum requested and many of them are likely duplicates.
"Maybe they’re just doing an overly-inclusive search," Norins said.
The school district’s statement said Branum "is welcome to narrow or revise the request."
Demographics of Gwinnett
Branum lives in Middle Georgia, about a three-hour drive southeast from Gwinnett County. She said other members of the group she leads, the Georgia Transparency Task Force, live in Gwinnett or close to it, and they’re alarmed to see hardline Islam creeping into public schools.
Gwinnett, a suburb of Atlanta, is the state’s most racially and ethnically diverse county and the epicenter of metro Atlanta's Muslim population, which is the largest in the southeast. The Georgia House district that includes Duluth High School is represented by Democrat Ruwa Romman, the first Palestinian American elected to public office in the state and the first Muslim woman elected to the House.
Romman, who wears a hijab, told The Center Square the activist seems to be targeting and "bullying" a young teacher because of how she expresses her religious beliefs, and she understands why the school system wants to avoid accidentally leaking any of her personal information, such as her home address. But Romman also said the district probably should have worked with Branum to narrow her request, before issuing such a huge asking fee.
"As somebody who does believe in government transparency, I do think there needs to be some way to be able to both protect this staff member and be transparent about that hiring process," Romman said.
Branum said she’s not bullying anyone but exercising her rights under state law.
"It’s not prejudice. We have a right to have transparency," she said.
Niqabs allowed
The Facebook post that prompted Branum’s public records search set off a tempest on social media – so much so that Duluth High School has since taken it down.
"The post about Ms. Kayum was removed because, unfortunately, an increasing number of comments on the post contained disparaging language directed at Ms. Kayum and her religion," the statement from Watson said.
The Center Square filed its own records request for Kayum's school system ID photo. It also shows her face covered by a niqab.
Kayum did not respond to an email sent to her school email address, and efforts to reach her by phone were unsuccessful.
Asked by email if Kayum will be wearing a face-covering niqab while teaching, Watson responded that Gwinnett schools "currently has no policy prohibiting teachers from wearing the described attire while teaching."
