NYC Public School Parents: Inordinate delays in US Dept of Education response to FERPA complaints lead to more blatant violations of student privacy by Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy

NYC Public School Parents: Inordinate delays in US Dept of Education response to FERPA complaints lead to more blatant violations of student privacy by Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy
Inordinate delays in US Dept of Education response to FERPA complaints lead to more blatant violations of student privacy by Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy

On May 4, 2019 , the NY Daily News ran an article about the plight of Lisa Vasquez and her autistic daughter Jazmiah who was pushed out of a Success Academy charter school; Success also repeatedly threatened to call the city’s Administration of Child Services on Ms. Vasquez. Her daughter has now been out of school for 18 months. The NYC Department of Education has failed to place her in any setting that provides her the services she needs, and refuses to pay for the private school that an impartial hearing officer has agreed would be appropriate.

The same day, the media outlet Chalkbeat ran a longer story about this family’s predicament. While answering questions from Chalkbeat reporter Alex Zimmerman, Success school officials showed him detailed confidential records from the student’s files, including “including progress reports, contemporaneous notes from multiple educators and psychologists, and a copy of her learning plan.”

This is a clear violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, also known as FERPA. Though Success Academy officials claim they had the right to “rebut false claims without violating FERPA when a parent has chosen to go the press,” there is no such provision in FERPA.

I contacted Ms. Vasquez through her attorney, and offered to help her file a FERPA complaint. She accepted and on May 9, she sent it to the US Department of Education. The complaint is below. We also filed a complaint with the NY State Education Department Chief Privacy Office, as this disclosure also violates NY State Education law 2D, the student privacy law passed in 2014 as a result of the controversy over inBloom.

What’s especially infuriating about these events is that Success Academy and its CEO, Eva Moskowitz, have been using these same illegal tactics for years to retaliate against families who dare criticize the way her schools treat students.

In October 2015, after Fatima Geidi was interviewed on a PBS News Hour show by John about how her son was mistreated by the principals and teachers at Success Academy, Eva Moskowitz sent a letter with details of his records, full of trumped up offenses, to every education reporter in the nation, and posted it on the Success website.

Fatima filed a FERPA complaint on Oct. 30, 2015, more than three years ago, a complaint that she is still waiting for the US Department of Education to respond to, though the Director of the Student Privacy Policy Office Michael Hawes told me the investigation into her complaint was essentially complete months ago. What is worse is that because of the long delay in responding, Moskowitz subsequently wrote a book in 2017 published by Harper Collins, containing many of the same false allegations against Fatima’s son, a book that is still sitting on the shelves and in libraries throughout the nation.

Moreover in at least five Success Academy charter schools, SAC Cobble Hill, SAC Crown Heights, SAC Fort Greene, SAC Harlem 2, and SAC Harlem 5, FERPA violations were noted by the SUNY Charter Institute during 2016 site visits, as noted in their Renewal reports. In each of these Renewal Reports, the same observation is made:

“The Institute and school worked cooperatively to correct minor infractions at the site visit regarding Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (“FERPA”) wherein the intent of the school was laudable but technically a violation…”

I wouldn’t necessary assume that the intent of these school officials was laudable – especially given the SUNY Charter Institute’s tendency to rubber stamp renewals and ignore CONTINUE READING: NYC Public School Parents: Inordinate delays in US Dept of Education response to FERPA complaints lead to more blatant violations of student privacy by Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy