New Connecticut Law Improves Data Privacy for Special Education Students

If you have a question or concern about special education law, school administration, federal standards, or the overall rights of a student, please feel free to call the expert education law attorneys at Maya Murphy, P.C. in Westport today at (203) 221-3100 .

It seemed that the logistics of Connecticut’s new student data privacy law — Public Act 16-189 — caught several of the New Canaan Board of Education members by surprise at its mid-summer meeting at South School Monday night, July 18.

The new law goes into effect Oct. 1 and calls for improved data privacy for all Connecticut students.

An overview of the passed legislation was presented to the New Canaan Board of Education in a meeting for the first time Monday night.

Despite the apparent surprise of Education board members, the bill has been available to the public since March as a part of a two-year effort by Board of Education member and former teacher Maria Naughton, New Canaan resident Dr. Kimberly Norton Butler and fellow Fairfield County residents Anne Manusky and Jennifer Jacobsen-Tapsall to help draft the legislation.

Those four women met two years ago and started pooling their efforts to research the 1974 federal Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

“Until we came on the scene, student privacy was a dead issue here in Connecticut,” Butler said in a press release. “We need to find a balance between advancing learning through digitization and safeguarding the future of school children.”

In the past, teachers would understand a student’s performance based on their own assessment or observation of the student,” Naughton said in a press release.

“However, now our children are spending more time in school online, using third-party instructional applications, which gather all kinds of information about students, including how and what they respond to when using an online program.”

“Third parties use or compile cognitive profiles on students throughout their educational career,” she said. “This law will allow families to understand and control the data being gathered on our children while they are in school.”

State Rep. and Ranking member of the Education Committee Gail Lavielle, Sen. Toni Boucher, Rep. Tom O’Dea, and Rep. Cristin McCarthy Vahey of Fairfield joined the efforts to safeguard student data.

Naughton, Butler, and Jacobsen-Tapsall attended a ceremonial signing of Public Act 16-189 at Governor Malloy’s office July 12, culminating the two-year journey.

According to a press release from the law’s local advocates the law will:

• Restrict how student information may be used by entities that contract to provide educational software and electronic storage of student records and by operators of websites, online services, or mobile applications (i.e. apps).
• Clarify that student data collected for school purposes is not owned by any of these third-party contractors.
• Require local boards of education to notify parents when they execute a new contract with a software, data storage, or internet service provider.
• Stipulate data security and privacy provisions that must figure in all contracts between local school districts and software, data storage, and internet service providers.
• Require school districts to withhold the release of student directory information if the local or regional board of education determines that a request for such information is not related to school purposes.

The collection of student-generated data to third-parties or private business came into play when President Barack Obama amended FERPA in 2012. Since then, states have started to find ways to limit the data released to third-parties. In 2016, there have been 94 student data policy bills in 31 states, according to the Data Quality Campaign (DTC).

Task force

The new law includes a provision that a task force shall be formed to look at issues set forth by the bill and then reports back to the public by Jan. 1, 2017.

Board of Education Chairman Dionna Carlson said that she was surprised the task force’s work would take place after the bill was passed as opposed to before.

However, Tom Mooney from Shipman & Goodwin law firm who presented an overview of the act to the Education board said that the task force does not have the authority to enact the law, impose new requirements, or excuse requirements.”

“Any changes in the law will come through the recommendation [from the task force] then the legislative action,” Mooney said. In other words, the general assembly will hear the recommendations of the task force before it would make any changes to the law.

Breaches

Board of Education member Sangeeta Appel voiced her concern about the case of a breach in student’s data. She asked Mooney what the ramifications of a breach would mean for both the student(s) and the third-party company.

“It’s an imperfect world and there will be breaches,” Mooney said. “This could give parents the right to sue as a contract matter.”

Local contracts

It is up to each individual Board of Education to come up with contracts for third-party organizations, according to Mooney.

Superintendent of New Canaan Public Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi said that the district has already included FERPA language in its contracts with third-party companies.

Luizzi said that the big companies like PowerSchool and IEP Direct must adapt for them to stay in the marketplace. He said that the smaller companies concern him and the district must identify very clear procedures. “We have our arms around the large contracts and the big pieces, it’s the smaller applications that we are working to properly manage,” Luizzi said.

“In a world where we do look for our teachers to be creative and to be identifying and using relevant and often times current information and technologies, we’re going to need to make sure our systems are in place to have contracts with vendors,” Luizzi said.

Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Dr. Jill Correnty said that the district has already told application companies “Thanks, but no thanks” because they would not comply with FERPA.

Carlson said that if legislators had “done the homework with the people that have to implement it up front, a lot of this stuff (issues) could have been eliminated.”

“Data privacy is a very noble goal but yet again the legislators get involved and they don’t understand the costs of implementing those things and the impacts on boards of educations,” Carlson said. “Yet again, we are saddled with a lot of costs and administrative effort.”

If you have a child with a disability and have questions about special education law, please contact Joseph C. Maya, Esq., at 203-221-3100, or at JMaya@mayalaw.com, to schedule a free consultation.

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Source- http://ncadvertiser.com/81678/with-new-law-passed-school-board-opens-student-privacy-talk/#axzz4Hi7M5Mx3