I’m on the student newspaper and I wanted to find out why my school made so many changes to our school lunch program recently. I submitted a FOIA request asking to see all of the principal’s email messages in the past year. The school told me it was going to charge me $5,000 to turn over the emails! I can’t afford that, so I can’t do the story. Is this right? Can the school charge me this much? Aren’t the emails public info?

A student at my school posted a mean comment about a math teacher on Facebook, saying “Ms. Smith is a f***ing bitch and is really a shitty teacher.” During school, ten other students “liked” the comment. The principal heard about the post and threatened to suspend the student who posted it and give anyone who “liked” it a detention. Can the school punish a student for venting on social media?