When the Texas Legislature passed the Public Information Act (TPIA) in 1973, Facebook didn't exist.
Neither did email.
The law was written for filing cabinets and meeting minutes — yet today, every comment, edit, and direct message on a school district's social media accounts can fall squarely under its requirements.
That gap between a 50-year-old transparency law and the way school districts actually communicate today is where most TPIA compliance problems begin.
A parent's angry comment gets hidden. A coach DMs a student from a personal account. A board member posts a budget update on Facebook and the district can't reproduce it 18 months later for an open records request.
This guide is for the records coordinators, compliance officers, communications staff, and superintendents who carry the weight of these situations. We'll cover what TPIA actually says about social media, when posts and comments become public records, what your district must produce within the 10-day deadline, what you can withhold, and how to build a retention program that holds up under scrutiny.
What Is the Texas Public Information Act?
The Texas Public Information Act (TPIA), codified in Chapter 552 of the Texas Government Code, guarantees the public's right to access information held by governmental bodies. It's one of the strongest transparency laws in the country, and it explicitly affirms that government is "the servant and not the master of the people."
In practice, the law has a number of features that records officers should know by heart:
- Who it covers: All Texas governmental bodies — state agencies, counties, cities, towns, special districts, public universities, government-funded nonprofits, and public school districts.
- Who can request: Anyone. There's no residency requirement and no obligation for the requester to explain why they want the records.
- What counts as a record: Any recorded information that documents official government business, regardless of format — paper, email, audio, video, websites, and social media.
- The deadline: Governmental bodies must respond within 10 business days.
- The arbiter: The Texas Attorney General's office issues binding opinions when a body wants to withhold information under an exception.
- The penalties: Civil fines for deliberate violations; rare criminal penalties for officials who knowingly violate the law.
If you're a Texas school district, you're a governmental body. The law applies to you exactly as it applies to a city or a state agency.
Why Social Media Falls Under TPIA
The Texas State Library and Archives Commission has been clear: social media content can be a government record under Texas law. Records can exist in any electronic format, and platform doesn't change the underlying obligation.
What matters is whether the content is unique and documents the transaction of public business. A district's official Facebook post announcing a school closure is a record. A parent's comment on that post — including any edit they make — is a record. A direct message between a principal and a parent about a discipline matter is a record. A teacher's personal Instagram post about a class field trip, conducted on behalf of the district, can be a record.
The platform doesn't decide. The content does.
When Social Media Becomes a Public Record in Texas
The single most important question for a records officer working with school social media is: which of these posts, comments, and messages count?
The default rule: if it documents public business, it counts. That includes:
- Posts made by the district or its employees in their official capacity
- Comments and replies on those posts
- Edits to comments (each version is its own record)
- Deletions (the deletion itself is a record event, and the original content must be retained)
- Direct messages on official platforms (Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs, X DMs, etc.)
- Photos, videos, and live streams attached to district business
But there is one nuance that catches districts off-guard: hiding a comment doesn't make it disappear. If your communications staff hid a comment because it violated your social media policy, the comment, the timestamp, the policy basis, and the action are all part of the record. The same goes for blocking a user — that act creates its own retainable record, and improper blocks have led to First Amendment lawsuits.
For the full breakdown see our article: "Are social Media Posts Records?"
Personal Accounts, Personal Devices, and Blurred Lines
Most TPIA mistakes don't usually happen on official accounts. They happen when a teacher messages a parent from their personal Instagram, a principal texts a discipline update from their personal phone, or two board members deliberate via personal email between meetings.
TPIA's reach is determined by the nature of the communication, not the device or account it lives on. If the content concerns official district business, it can be subject to the law — even if it sits on hardware your district doesn't own.
That creates obvious enforcement problems. Districts can't archive what they don't know about, and they can't compel an employee to surrender personal devices without legal process. The practical answer is structural: keep business and personal cleanly separated through policy, training, and access to official communication channels.
The cleanest framing, and the one most districts adopt verbatim in their social media policies, is that "business is business and personal is personal." Conduct district business on district accounts. Period. If a personal communication accidentally touches district business, employees should forward it into an official channel and document the handoff.
The 10-Day Texas Records Response Rule
When a written records request arrives, your district has 10 business days to respond. "Respond" doesn't necessarily mean produce all the records in 10 days — but it does mean you must take one of three substantive actions inside that window:
- Provide the records.
- Notify the requester of a date when the records will be available. This is allowed when the request is large or complex, but the notice itself must happen inside 10 business days.
- Request an Attorney General decision if you believe the records (or part of them) fall under an exception.
What does not count: an automated acknowledgment with no substance, an internal forward with no contact to the requester, or a verbal answer to a written request.
The 10-day window is also when cost estimates have to be given to the requester. If the request will trigger meaningful retrieval or production costs, the requester is entitled to an estimate before charges are incurred.
Here is a general, workable internal cadence for a records officer:
- Day 0: Log the request, capture the timestamp and source, confirm scope with the requester if ambiguous.
- Days 1–2: Identify all custodians of responsive records — including, critically, your social media archive.
- Days 3–5: Pull records, identify likely redactions or exemptions.
- Days 6–8: Produce the records, or notify the requester of timeline, or refer to the AG.
- Days 9–10: Deliver.
The single most common 10-day failure: forgetting that social media is in scope.
A request for "all communications between the superintendent and the public regarding the bond election" almost certainly captures Facebook comments, replies, and DMs. If your archive can't surface those quickly, the deadline is at risk before you've started.
What Records Can Texas School Districts Withhold?
TPIA's default is disclosure. That's the rule to internalize before anything else. Every record is presumed public unless an exception applies, and the burden is on the district to justify withholding — not on the requester to argue for release.
A handful of exceptions are used routinely by Texas school districts:
- FERPA-protected student records. Federal student privacy law preempts disclosure of student information.
- Employee personal information. Social Security numbers, home addresses, phone numbers, and similar PII can be withheld.
- Security-related information. Emergency response plans, lockdown procedures, and similar materials whose disclosure could endanger people or facilities.
- Law enforcement records that would interfere with active investigations.
- Trade secrets and proprietary vendor information.
- Attorney-client communications and attorney work product.
Here are few social-media-specific clarifications that districts often miss:
- Hidden comments are not withheld. Hiding a comment from public view doesn't change its status as a record. It must be produced if responsive.
- Deleted comments are still records. If you've retained them properly, they must be produced. If you haven't retained them, you have a bigger problem on your hands than this request.
- Profanity isn't automatically exempt. What you can and can't moderate is governed by your social media policy, not by TPIA. The records still need to exist.
The procedural side matters as much as the substance. If you intend to withhold, you must request an AG decision within the 10-day window, provide the records to the AG along with your written argument, and continue retaining them pending the opinion. Improper withholding can result in compelled release, civil penalties, and — rarely — criminal exposure.
Retention, Authenticity, & the Limits of Platform-Native Records
The least understood part of TPIA compliance is also the part that tends to fail. By the time a district realizes its retention strategy is inadequate, a records request has already exposed the gap.
Here's what TPIA requires of an electronic record:
- It must be authentic — defensible as an unaltered representation of the original.
- It must include metadata — author, timestamps, account context, and the technical signals needed to verify integrity.
- It must be digitally timestamped so the record's chronology is provable.
- It must be retrievable within the response window.
- It must include prior versions — every edit, every deletion, every state change.
Now consider what platform-native exports give you:
- No contractual obligation. Facebook, X, Instagram, and YouTube have no agreement with your district to retain anything. Account suspensions, API changes, and platform policy shifts have erased records before, and they will again.
- No tamper-evident chain of custody. Platform exports don't carry a digital signature you can defend in front of the AG.
- Edits and deletions vanish. Most platforms surface only the current state of a comment. The earlier versions are gone the moment a user edits.
- DMs require manual export. Easy to forget in a complex request.
- Retrieval is slow. Manual export, manual search, manual redaction — the 10-day window evaporates fast.
The fix is a continuous, real-time social media archive that captures records as they're created (not on demand), preserves every version with metadata and a digital signature, and gives you the ability to conduct full-text searches so you can locate all of the relevant content quickly and export it in readable formatting.
→ For more criteria to help you evaluate an archiving solution, see "The Government Social Media Archiving Buyer’s Guide"
Seven Best Practices for a Compliant Social Media Program
The districts that handle TPIA cleanly tend to share the same seven habits.
1. Designate a records coordinator. One person or role who owns the integrity of your electronic records and the fulfillment of records requests. Without clear ownership, deadlines slip and exemptions get applied inconsistently.
2. Use official accounts for official business. No exceptions for "convenience." Document this in policy, repeat it in training, and make the official channels easy enough to use that no one is tempted to fall back on personal accounts.
3. Publish a clear social media policy. It should define purpose, scope, moderation rules, what happens when a violation occurs, and your retention schedule. Most districts post the policy publicly on the district website so it's referenceable in any dispute.
4. Train staff annually. Records compliance is a use-it-or-lose-it skill. Annual refreshers, especially for new hires and role changes, prevent the most common personal-account incidents.
5. Capture records in real time. Don't rely on platforms. Don't rely on annual exports. Capture posts, comments, edits, deletions, and DMs as they happen with automated social media archiving.
6. Set retention schedules tied to your records policy. Keep records as long as required, no longer than necessary, with legal hold available when legal matters arise.
7. Monitor proactively. Profanity, slurs, threats, and clearly off-policy comments shouldn't survive in your moderation queue for hours. Real-time alerts on keywords, emojis, and patterns let your communications team enforce the policy without watching every account 24/7.
Common TPIA Social Media Mistakes
There are few patterns we see show up repeatedly in the calls we have with Texas school districts, that we think are worth noting here.
DON'T:
- Treat "Page Manager" as an archive. Facebook's native moderation tools are not retention. They're operational.
- Assume hidden = withheld. Hiding a comment doesn't make it a non-record.
- Delete comments without documenting why. If you ever moderate, document the policy basis at the time of action. It's the only defense against allegations of viewpoint discrimination.
- Forget DMs. They're records. They need to be in scope of every retention strategy and every records request response.
- Rely on "we'll just export it later." APIs change. Accounts get suspended. Platforms shift policy. "Later" is the moment when records vanish.
- Mix personal and official accounts. Even with good intentions, this creates ambiguity that benefits no one — least of all the records officer who has to defend the response.
DO:
- Capture records continuously through a dedicated archive that operates independently of the platform — so retention doesn't depend on a Facebook setting, an admin's diligence, or an export schedule.
- Treat every comment, edit, and deletion as a record by default. If you intend to withhold, do it through the formal exemption process and an AG decision — never by hiding the content from public view.
- Document moderation actions in the moment — the policy basis, the timestamp, the staff member who took the action, and the specific rule the comment violated. Most archive tools have a notes field designed for exactly this.
- Capture records in real time via API integration, so the retention work is finished before a request ever lands. The 10-day clock is hard enough without spending the first three days exporting.
- Provide official accounts and channels for every role that interacts with the public, and require their use in policy. Train annually. Make the official tools good enough that personal workarounds don't feel necessary.
Building a TPIA-Compliant Program — Where to Go From Here
The Texas Public Information Act treats social media as it treats any other government record: subject to disclosure, governed by a 10-day deadline, defined by content rather than format, and protected only by a narrow set of exceptions. The districts that handle this cleanly are the ones that built a program for capturing, retaining, and producing records as a matter of routine.
That means procuring an archiving tool that captures in real time, an internal workflow that meets the 10-day rule reliably, a social media policy that's publicly posted and understood by staff, and a records coordinator who owns the integrity of all of it.
If you're just starting this work, you're on the right track. Make sure to check out our other government recordkeeping resources so you can keep learning.
If you're further along in the process and want to see what a real-time, TPIA-compliant archive looks like — including edit tracking, digital signatures, search across accounts, and case-based exports for records requests — Pagefreezer works with school districts across Texas, including a number of ESC 20 members.
Reach out for a demo or a 1:1 conversation about how we can help.
TPIA + Social Media Frequently Asked Questions
Are tweets and X posts subject to TPIA?
Yes. TPIA applies to any platform where district business is conducted. Posts, replies, quote tweets, and direct messages all carry the same potential to be records as content on Facebook or Instagram.
What about TikTok?
The platform doesn't matter — the content does. If your district maintains a TikTok presence and posts about district business, those posts are subject to TPIA. Capture them in your archive.
Are likes and reactions records?
The Texas State Library and Archives Commission emphasizes that records must document the transaction of public business. A simple like or reaction generally doesn't meet that bar on its own, though aggregate engagement data attached to a post can be relevant. When in doubt, retain.
What about retired or deleted social media accounts?
You're still responsible for records created during the account's active period. The standard practice is to migrate the archive to ongoing storage with retention controls before decommissioning the account.
Does TPIA require a specific archiving tool?
No. TPIA specifies what records must look like — authentic, timestamped, retrievable, with metadata and version history — but not which tool you use to achieve that. Districts should evaluate solutions against the requirements, not the brand.
How long must school districts retain social media records?
Retention periods are governed by the Local Schedule SD (Records of Public School Districts) issued by the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. Specific retention varies by record type; consult the schedule for the social-media-relevant categories that apply to your district.
What happens if we can't produce a record because we never archived it?
The honest answer is that you've likely violated the law. The exposure ranges from civil penalties to compelled release of whatever records can be reconstructed, plus reputational damage. It's also the kind of failure that draws attention — and once it's known, requesters will probe further.
This article is informational and does not constitute legal advice. Records officers should consult their district's legal counsel on specific records-handling situations.
