Sarah Terrell was surprised to learn in 2016 that her son’s Houston high school was being renamed. In the span of one October week, it was announced — and then made official — that the High School for Performing and Visual Arts would now be called HSPVA Kinder, in honor of a local foundation that had donated $7.5 million to the school.
Terrell was curious: How could that have happened so quickly? Did other schools handle renaming decisions the same way?
So she filed an open-records request to see how the University of Houston had renamed three of its sports venues. But her attempt to learn more about how taxpayer-funded schools operate failed. After months of back-and-forth, she was denied all but one contract, and in the one she did receive, most of the information was redacted. (Read more here…)