Education Records and PS Denying Access; 3rd Party Access to Education Records Without Consent

[Laura O]

Hi All, nice to meet you!

What can a parent do when a PS District refuses to produce the specific student education records the parent requested?

Even when parents asked for every single record the PS district plays games, refuses to produce them electronically via email, or gives parents non responsive records like:

• only produced correspondence parent themselves sent to PS/District or were cc'd on while refusing to give intra school correspondences or out of district correspondences etc discussing that student 
• gives select or minute amount of school health unit or other student area educational records withholding majority
• claims that records don't exist when they do and shields them prior to IEP Team Meetings, state education complaints or due process etc
• gives a vague email to the parent claiming "district/PS produced all records requested" yet they never did

 

How can a parent stop a PS district without consent continuing to allow 3rd party access to their child's student education and other records placing them online cloud servers ? Is there any actual accountability for PS Districts allowing technological 3rd party without consent access like this?

This example the PS district continues to upload private protected PII and FERPA  student education and other records onto cloud servers (like google) and where:

• PS/District creates a public link that anyone can access to those students educational records
• PS may be giving these links to those students educational records out to school committee members, staff or other 
• These 3rd party cloud servers are not the property of the PS District
• the private server companies employees also can freely access these students educational records 
• these student education records are not being custodian appropriately by the PS/district 
• the parent told them to stop doing this PS District ignores this and keeps on uploading more and more of the students records onto additional cloud servers etc

this allows these confidential student records to be access by anyone for years to come and limitless 3rd party accessing and is seen by the student and parent as a adversarial and negative harassing action. PS Districts are well aware their responsibility to keep these records private

We have a horrific practice of this occurring in Massachusetts led by public school agent advising their PS District clients in more than 150 districts to do things like this to deny students FAPE or restitution. Curious what other states have this segregating FERPA or allowing 3rd party access interfering with your PS students rights?

We're trying to end this practice so would appreciate if any of you faced this, and what did you find to work to protect students rights to get any PS or district to knock it off and produce in full records directly to the student/parent secure and keep private student education records and end 3rd party accesses. Thank you all for your time and the topics you posted, these forums and topics discussed already are very helpful.

 

 

[JSD24]

I go to my SD's school board meetings so I'm up on what they do with records retention.  They might really purge the records you're looking for.

FERPA is a federal law.  There has to be someone at the federal level to figure out if cloud storage violates FERPA or not.  I know my district takes this stuff very seriously and they have all sorts of things that protect confidentiality.  It seems like they have a form for this:  https://studentprivacy.ed.gov/file-a-complaint