Public Data Requests

According to the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act, "government data" means all data collected, created, received, maintained or disseminated by any government entity regardless of its physical form, storage media or conditions of use.

It also defines categories of data:

• Data not on individuals. "Data not on individuals" are all government data that are not data on individuals.
• Data on individuals. "Data on individuals" means all government data in which any individual is or can be identified as the subject of that data, unless the appearance of the name or other identifying data can be clearly demonstrated to be only incidental to the data and the data are not accessed by the name or other identifying data of any individual.
• Not public data. "Not public data" are any government data classified by statute, federal law, or temporary classification as confidential, private, nonpublic, or protected nonpublic.

Please complete this form to make a data request to the Minneapolis Public Schools.

Upon receiving your request, we will review it. We may ask you to clarify what data you are requesting.

If we do not have the data, we will notify you within 10 business days.

If we have the data, but we are not allowed to give it to you, we will tell you as soon as reasonably possible and identify the law that prevents us from providing the data.

If we have the data, and the data are public, we will respond to your request appropriately and promptly, within a reasonable amount of time by doing one of the following:

• Arrange a date, time, and place for you to inspect the data at our offices; or
• You may choose to pick up your copies, or we will mail or email them to you.  We will provide electronic copies (such as email or CD-ROM) upon request, if we keep the data in that format and we can reasonably make a copy.
• Response time may be impacted by the size and/or complexity of your request, and also by the number of requests you make in a given period of time.

The Data Practices Act does not require us to create or collect new data in response to a data request, or to provide data in a specific form or arrangement if we do not keep the data in that form or arrangement. For example, if the data you request are on paper only, we are not required to create electronic documents to respond to your request. If we agree to create data in response to your request, we will work with you on the details of your request, including cost and response time.

We are also not required to respond to questions that are not about your data requests, or requests for government data.

If you would like copies of the data, you will be charged for the copies. If we can provide the data to you electronically, there will be no charge. Please note that MPS is required to provide the data as we maintain it. We will not use staff time to modify or analyze data for the sole purpose of public data requests.

MPS cannot require anyone to identify themselves or explain the reason for their data request. If someone decides not to provide MPS with contact information, we will be unable to contact you with specific questions about your request.

According MPS Board Policy 5690, to the following information is considered public:

• Name, height, and weight of individual members of athletic teams
• Name of recipient and name of award or scholarship received
• Names of participants in officially recognized school activities

Data Practices Contacts 

Responsible Authority:

Ryan Strack
ryan.strack@mpls.k12.mn.us

Data Practices Compliance Official:

Kate Bechtle
publicdatarequests@mpls.k12.mn.us