Tom Kamenick and Libby Sobic :

The ugly: Of the 20 largest school districts, eight (Eau Claire, Elmbrook, Janesville, Kenosha, Madison, Sheboygan, Wausau and Wauwatosa) would not fulfill our requests without payment. The fees ranged from $15 to, in Madison’s case, more than $1,000.

According to the Madison School District’s attorney, the district does not have a system for tracking open records requests, hence its extremely high fee in this case. While records custodians are allowed to charge for locating records, school districts that need so much time to locate records are apparently not doing a good job of tracking requests. It should not be so hard to find out how well any government entity complies with the law.

The takeaway: Walker’s executive order led to measurable improvements in the response time of state agencies. School districts and other local governments can use the same processes, including better training and tracking systems, to achieve similar improvements.

Appleton’s budget is $201,399,239 for 15,169 students, about $13,277 per student.

Green Bay plans to spend roughly $272,000,000 during the 2017-2018 school year for 21,000 students, about $12,952 per student.

Madison spends far more, nearly $20,000 per student.