Seattle Schools Community Forum: Student Data Privacy Meets " Not Cooperative" Sped Parents in Massachusetts

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Student Data Privacy Meets " Not Cooperative" Sped Parents in Massachusetts:

Student Data Privacy Meets " Not Cooperative" Sped Parents in Massachusetts

In what can only be termed "disgraceful," Tewksbury Public Schools accidentally released private student info about the out-of-district placements for 83 Special Ed students and rated parents by their "cooperativeness."  The document had been online for almost a week.  From the Tewksbury Town Crier:

In December the district blamed a projected $2 million shortfall for FY2016 on ‘skyrocketing’ out of district costs, and said that it could not implement a proposed free full-day kindergarten program as a result. That action generated distrust and backlash by the special education community, and this most recent release of data has parents ready to file complaints at the state and federal levels.

The seven-page memo from Rick Pelletier, Director of Student Services, to the Superintendent was included in the School Committee packet as part of its budget justification package last week. The memo includes a spreadsheet that listed all the students with out of district placements – and also included a ranking on ‘parental cooperativeness.’ The amount of data included could indicate a violation of state and federal law.

The office of Student Services also published its rating of parents according to their ‘cooperativeness with the district.’ Parents rated a ‘1’ are cooperative, ‘2’ somewhat cooperative, and those rated ‘3’ are ‘not cooperative.’


The newspaper itself said they could "easily identify" at least seven families in the list with readers contacting them saying they, too, could figure out who students were in the document.

The district, the state and the feds all had different levels of reaction.  (Interestingly, Massachusett's law is stronger than FERPA - good for them.)

The feds:
That same spokesman told the Town Crier that if the information was publicly disclosed and a parent believes that the disclosure of this information is personally identifiable to their child, they may file a complaint with the Family Policy Compliance Office for consideration.

Big whoop.  There have been virtually NO complaints that to the DOE on Seattle Schools Community Forum: Student Data Privacy Meets " Not Cooperative" Sped Parents in Massachusetts: