Legal Question Of The Week - November 8, 2012
By Attorney Thomas B. Mooney, Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut
The "Legal Question of the Week" is a regular feature of the CAS Weekly NewsBlast. We invite readers to submit short, law-related questions of practical concern to school administrators. Each week, we will select a question and publish an answer. While these answers cannot be considered formal legal advice, they may be of help to you and your colleagues. We may edit your questions, and we will not identify the authors. Please submit your questions to: legalmailbag@casciac.org
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Dear Legal Mailbag:
A student made threatening comments to a teacher, and we expelled the student. The threats were so vivid and upsetting that I called a faculty meeting. At the meeting, I told the entire faculty in detail about the threats and his expulsion, and I told them to watch out for the student. To underscore the need for vigilance, I told the teachers about the student’s history of mental illness. One of my teachers told the student’s parents about the meeting, and now they are all over me for invasion of privacy. Can’t I warn my staff about this student?
Signed,
Better Safe Than Sorry
Dear Sorry:
The question here is whether all teachers in the building needed to know everything you shared about the student. That is a tough argument to win. The standard under FERPA is whether the recipients of the information have a legitimate educational interest in receiving the information. To be sure, you can justify the need to warn teachers about the threats and the need to keep an eye out. Indeed, you can even extend that rationale to other staff members, such as secretaries and custodians. However, it is hard (as in impossible) to extend that logic to justify disclosing to everyone the student’s disciplinary record and especially his history of mental illness. Whenever you disclose personally-identifiable student information, you want to be able to articulate why the recipients need the specific information in order to do their jobs.
The "Legal Question of the Week" is a regular feature of the CAS Weekly NewsBlast. We invite readers to submit short, law-related questions of practical concern to school administrators. Each week, we will select a question and publish an answer. While these answers cannot be considered formal legal advice, they may be of help to you and your colleagues. We may edit your questions, and we will not identify the authors. Please submit your questions to: legalmailbag@casciac.org
_____________________________________________________________________________
Dear Legal Mailbag:
A student made threatening comments to a teacher, and we expelled the student. The threats were so vivid and upsetting that I called a faculty meeting. At the meeting, I told the entire faculty in detail about the threats and his expulsion, and I told them to watch out for the student. To underscore the need for vigilance, I told the teachers about the student’s history of mental illness. One of my teachers told the student’s parents about the meeting, and now they are all over me for invasion of privacy. Can’t I warn my staff about this student?
Signed,
Better Safe Than Sorry
Dear Sorry:
The question here is whether all teachers in the building needed to know everything you shared about the student. That is a tough argument to win. The standard under FERPA is whether the recipients of the information have a legitimate educational interest in receiving the information. To be sure, you can justify the need to warn teachers about the threats and the need to keep an eye out. Indeed, you can even extend that rationale to other staff members, such as secretaries and custodians. However, it is hard (as in impossible) to extend that logic to justify disclosing to everyone the student’s disciplinary record and especially his history of mental illness. Whenever you disclose personally-identifiable student information, you want to be able to articulate why the recipients need the specific information in order to do their jobs.