It's the Law: Things Parents Can Never Know About Student Discipline
To parents of students in schools across the country, it seems like a simple and reasonable request. Your child was threatened or bullied or hurt by another student, and you want to know if the offending student was disciplined or suspended. You want to know that your child can feel safe at school and that justice was done.
The principal, though, won’t say if the offending student has been suspended. Even if you insist on knowing, she says the law prevents her from telling you.
What’s the story?
The story is this: federal law actually prohibits principals or any other school employee from telling you about discipline that has been handed out to students other than your own.
The law is The Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, better known by its acronym, FERPA. FERPA is a federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. The law spells out exactly what information principals, teachers and other school officials can share and who they can share it with. Principals can talk to you about school discipline in general and certainly the specifics of any discipline affecting your child. To specify discipline given to students who are not your children would be a violation of federal law.
No principal wants to break the law. And truth be told, everyone should prefer that principals serve as good role models for students by obeying laws of the land.
There are things principals can tell you. They can tell you the situation has been looked at and handled. They can tell you an offending student was disciplined, but not describe what the consequences were. Without talking about a specific student, they can tell you the range of consequences students might typically receive for certain types of offenses.
Even so, there are times when the lack of requested information can be frustrating for parents. Parents in some cases think the incident is being covered up and that nothing is being done to the offending student. Sometimes parents call the superintendent, school board members or the media and demand answers.
"It’s important not to mistake lack of information for lack of action. Our principals are experienced and know how to thoroughly investigate a situation while providing due process protection for all concerned. They know that appropriate consequences benefit everyone, even the offending student. When students misbehave or make poor choices, they can learn from fairly administered discipline. It’s just that the principal is limited by law from talking about the consequences with anyone other than that child's parents," says Sue Kuntze, assistant superintendent of Elementary Education.
What Can School Officials Talk About?
Need to Know
FERPA allows schools to share student information to the following parties or under the following conditions:
- School officials with legitimate educational interest
- Other schools to which a student is transferring
- Specified officials for audit or evaluation purposes
- Appropriate parties in connection with financial aid to a student
- Organizations conducting certain studies for or on behalf of the school
- Accrediting organizations
- To comply with a judicial order or lawfully issued subpoena
- Appropriate officials in cases of health and safety emergencies
- State and local authorities, within a juvenile justice system, pursuant to specific State law.
Directory Information
FERPA allows schools to publicly share what the law refers to as "directory information." The primary purpose of directory information is to allow schools to use information about students in records in certain school publications or media stories. Each school district gets to decide what types of information they will consider to be directory information. Parents and students over the age of 18 have the right to request that the school not disclose directory information about them.
Putnam City has designated the following information as directory information:
- Student's name
- Parent’s or guardian’s name
- Address
- Telephone number
- Date and place of birth
- Weight and height
- Grade level
- Dates of enrollment
- Honors and awards received
- Most recent previous school attended
- Student statements/quotes
- Photographs
- Audio or videotapes which identify the student's participation in and/or achievements earned in enrolled courses or recognized activities and sports.