Fairview School Open records

At first I was uneasy about undertaking this "open records challenge." I figured that no public official wanted to waste their time Xeroxing old documents for me and that my request would be shoved aside until the last minute, however, I was plesantly suprised at the reception of my request.
I started out by doing some research to find out who the "right-to-know" officer was at my old high school, Fairview. The school's website said that all open records requests should be sent to the superintendnet, Mr. Larry Kessler. Now, Mr. Kessler has been the superintendent at Fairview for a number of years, including the ones which I spent in the school, which has an enrollment of less that 600 kids. He and I have met, to say the least, for that matter he still strikes up a conversation with me whenever I run into him around town, he's a pretty nice guy afterall. Now, asking Mr. Kessler for a copy of his contract, as option #1 instructs, seemed rather rude to me. Thus I settled on option 2, which is a request for the documents showing the total amount spent on legal fees by the school district from the previous year.
I mailed my request on March 31st, including my address here at school, my cell phone number, and my E-mail address in the letter so they could easily contact me. Well, about 5 days later, Ed Barnes, Fairview School District's bussiness manager, called my Mom instead of me. You can imagine my poor mother's shock when this fellow, whom she also knows rather well, calls her house looking for me and carrying on about legal fees. It took some real reassuring on my part that I was not in any trouble and that we didn't need to call a lawyer.
Finally, everything got straightend out and Mr. Barnes mailed a rather thick envelope stuffed full of legal receipts from the 06-07 school year to me. He included a very nice letter instructing me to feel free to call him personally if I had any problems or if I needed any more information.
The information on the documents was astounding. Some of the proceedings cost less that $100 total, but other instances, such as a termination settlement between the school and the old schoolboard president racked up nearly $4000! A disciplinary hearing for a student, whose name was left unknown, back in January of 2007 cost the district $1,200 just to expell the kid!
I was pleased that it was rather easy to get this information sent back to me with such enthusiasim. I still don't know why they called my Mom, but it all worked out. My only question is if I would have had as easy of a time trying to obtain public records from an institution that I myself was not affiliated with for 8 years.