A federal judge has ordered the Ohio Department of Education to release personally identifying information on students with disabilities who attended an Ohio public school during the 2013-14 school year, the Newark Advocate reports.
The state is being sued in a class-action lawsuit over the adequacy of its funding for special education programs under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and the court has determined that the data are required, including information that links to individual students, in order to support an objective ruling in the case.
Ordinarily, this information would be kept confidential by the state’s education department, and because of federal privacy laws, parents in Ohio must be given the opportunity to object to the release.
That opportunity is also part of a new set of guidelines regarding student privacy issued last month by the US Department of Education. Before the state can release the information, it must inform parents of the following:
- The information released (student IDs but not names or SSNs, demographic, disability, attendance, suspensions/expulsions, state test scores)
- The purpose for the release (compliance with a court order)
- Their rights under FERPA and other laws
- How to contact appropriate school officials with questions
The information about students will be released, if parents don’t successfully object, to Disability Rights Ohio, the group that filed the motion on Aug 13 to get the information. DRO won’t be able to publish it or disseminate it in any way, and the court has restricted the organization’s use of the data to the lawsuit; no other use can be made of the data.
Parents have until Sept 12 to object. Our best advice, if you want to object, is to send a letter to the court, noting in capital, bold, underlined text on the first page of the letter, that you’re writing an “objection to disclosure of FERPA information in Doe v. State, case No. 91-464.” If you’re objecting on behalf of your minor child, you’re required to state your relationship to the child. Mailing address:
Clerks’s Office: Judge Watson’s Docket
U.S. Courthouse
85 Marconi Blvd.
Columbus, OH 43215
Rethink and rewrite DRO’s argument in favor of the release of original and complete student records instead of a summary of disability funding. See Common Core language arts literacy standard RI.11-12.5 for more information.
