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:

We have had an In-School Suspension program for some years now. In fact, when the legislation came out, our program and representatives from the school held seminars for various organizations (in the state and CAS) about the logistics, pitfalls, data and funding. One of the aspects of our program has been to email the staff the afternoon prior to the ISS so that teachers can get the work ready for the students scheduled the next day. That work is then brought/emailed to our ISS coordinator who then tracks the work completion and ensures that completed work is returned to the teachers.

So my question deals with that email. Does the fact that the email going out to our certified staff (not just the teachers directly associated with those ISS students) violate FERPA? In other words, should the ISS email ONLY go out to the teachers that have are specifically assigned to those students?

Signed,
Cautious about Confidential Info



Dear Cautious:

Your question is excellent, and you have correctly identified a problem with your current procedures. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act prohibits the disclosure of personally-identifiable student information by educational agencies that receive federal funding unless (1) they have written consent of the parents (or student 18 or older), or (2) there is an exception to the general rule permitting disclosure. Here, however, there is no applicable exception, and the broadcast dissemination of the list of students on in-school or external suspension does indeed violate FERPA.

A common exception to the general rule against disclosing personally-identifiable student information without parent consent is disclosure to “school officials” who have “a legitimate educational interest” in the information. Some situations are clear. A third grade teacher may need to know the second grade reading levels of her students in order to assess their educational needs and plan instruction. However, here, the list of students on suspension goes to all certified staff. The vast majority of those certified staff members do not need the information to do their jobs, and as such have no “legitimate educational interest” in receiving the information.

There is another exception to disclosure that permits general dissemination of student information. “Directory information” is information concerning a student’s name, address, schools attended, honors and awards received, height and weight of members of sports teams and other information that would not be considered harmful or an invasion of privacy if released. This provision of FERPA permits school districts to release innocuous personally-identifiable information without parent consent, such as rosters of sports teams or the honor roll. However, there is no honor in being suspended, and thus the information about suspended students that is disseminated at your school is not directory information. Its release violates FERPA, and you should straighten that out.