Pellet gun incident raises privacy issues

When a student brought a pellet gun to Stevens Elementary School last month, Spokane Public Schools officials waited six business days before telling the public, and only then because a reporter heard about it through other sources.

Because the student didn’t threaten anyone with the gun, no note was sent home with students about the incident.

When information was released, it contained only the sketchiest of details, with no information about possible discipline.

The Feb. 18 case illustrates a common scenario at many Spokane County school districts. Districts must consider federal privacy laws when giving out specific student records, which include discipline or other safety issues parents may want to know about.

The Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act, commonly called FERPA, has caused a lot of discussion among school district officials, said Michael Dunn, superintendent of the Cheney School District. The 1974 federal law has been updated nine times, most recently in 2001 with the Patriot Act.

FERPA protects the privacy of student education records, according to a U.S. Department of Education Web site. The law limits the information schools are allowed to disclose without parental consent to “directory” information such as name, address, telephone number, date and place of birth, honors and awards, and dates of attendance. For instance, a school could release information that’s available on a sports team’s roster under FERPA without parental permission.

Sometimes, upset parents call about the actions of other students within a school, and there’s little that can be revealed to a parent about someone else’s child, Dunn said.

In the last five years, there’s been greater emphasis on following the federal guidelines, he said. That emphasis has come from increased awareness of privacy laws and legal liabilities, he said.

“Ordinarily, we don’t share discipline information other than with the student and his or her parents, although clearly some things become so public you can’t help but share more,” Dunn said.

The information Spokane Public Schools gives out regarding student discipline varies depending on the situation, according to the district’s communication officer.

As a practice, district spokeswoman Terren Roloff said, she does not volunteer specific student discipline information to reporters or the general public, a common practice among many districts. But that doesn’t mean disciplinary information hasn’t become public in a number of ways.

When parents call reporters and reporters call the district communication office, then, Roloff said, she will talk about the incident with minimal details. Other districts have similar practices.

“We try to be responsive,” she said. “We still don’t go into the discipline itself.”

Many schools do send notes home with students to alert parents to some situations. Roloff said in the Stevens Elementary case a note was not sent to students’ homes because the student with the pellet gun didn’t threaten anyone.

Roloff said in a written statement that “Congress, the courts, and the Department of Education have determined that disclosure of disciplinary records and information without prior parental consent constitutes an invasion of privacy as a matter of law.”

The law protects any information that’s included in a child’s education record. The record can be shared with school officials, other schools and health officials.

On Feb. 16, the Central Valley School District released information on a kindergarten student’s discipline after an investigation was completed regarding the 5-year-old boy. He was placed on emergency expulsion after he brought a small pocket knife to school and threatened other children on the playground, according to district spokeswoman Melanie Rose. That expulsion was converted into a long-term suspension, Rose said.

The suspension information was released after repeated media requests, she said. Rose and top school officials met to determine what they could say.

“The information we released was based on what we did in a similar situation,” Rose said.

The day after they released information regarding the student, the kindergartener’s mother called the district.

“She was unhappy because it was her impression the school district had alerted the media,” Rose said. “She wanted to know when the media would be done covering the event.”

There’s no question that school officials must be cautious about what information they release, said Cal Johnson, executive director of student services for Mead School District. And it’s looking to get even tighter based on some pending court cases he heard about recently, Johnson said.

“School administrators will probably have to read kids their rights (eventually),” Johnson said. “Everything is more restrictive in terms of not being able to give information out.”