Judge orders records’ release

Green County, AR -- Greene County Circuit Judge Brent Davis ordered the Greene County Tech School District to release documents related to the suspension of several assistant football coaches after a November 2009 playoff trip to Monticello.

The Daily Press requested the documents under the state Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in December 2009 and the district denied the request, citing an unwarranted invasion of privacy and no compelling public interest in the documents’ release. The newspaper sued the district in February, alleging a willful violation of FOIA. The district responded by claiming the provision of the law cited in the documents’ request was unconstitutional.

After a hearing May 18, Davis requested the district to provide the documents at issue to him for an in camera review.

Read the rest here.

Illini Fighting Release of Admissions Clout List

The Chicago Tribune's "Clout Goes to College" investigation into a scandal at the University of Illinois involving admissions of "subpar but politically connected applicants" over more qualified applicants. The newspaper is challenging the university's refusal to release hundreds of names of applicants and any law enforcement subpoenas received by the school as well as the results of a July poll of alumni and other respondents.  

So far the fallout from the scandal includes U. of I. President B. Joseph White, who announced his resignation last month, and the replacement of six university trustees.  

The legal battle playing out in a Sangamon County court pits student privacy against public disclosure. 

Get more details here. 

EPA Database Reveals Tainted Water in Schools

The Charleston Daily Mail reports that an Associated Press investigation of water in schools revealed thousands of schools across the nation with unsafe levels of  lead, pesticides and dozens of other toxins.

"The AP analyzed an EPA database showing federal drinking water violations from 1998 to 2008 in schools with their own water supplies. The findings:

Water in about 100 school districts and 2,250 schools breached federal safety standards.

Those schools and districts racked up more than 5,550 separate violations. In 2008, the EPA recorded 577 violations, up from 59 in 1998 - an increase that officials attribute mainly to tougher rules.

California, which has the most schools of any state, also recorded the most violations with 612, followed by Ohio (451), Maine (417), Connecticut (318) and Indiana (289).

Nearly half the violators in California were repeat offenders. One elementary school in Tulare County, in the farm country of the Central Valley, broke safe-water laws 20 times.

The most frequently cited contaminant was coliform bacteria, followed by lead and copper, arsenic and nitrates."

Get the complete report here.

What Did the Austin School District Want in a New Superintendent?

Answers can be found in documents and notes produced pursuant to the Texas Public Information Act. While state law allows school districts to withhold superintendent candidate names, the Texas Attorney General said Austin could not withhold records by arguing that the documents would lead to a candidate's identification.

The Austin American-Statesman reports that, as of July 2009, the school district had spent $20,000 trying to keep the documents private, arguing that secrecy was necessary to preserve the district's ability to conduct superintendent searches that would "attract the maximum number of good candidates."

More here.

Site tracks banned books on Google map

A Google map on the Banned Books Week Web site shows more than 120 book challenges that have occurred across the country since 2007.

Are some parts of the United States more prone to censorship than others? Not according to a new map of book censorship incidents that has just been posted on the official Web site of Banned Books Week, www.bannedbooksweek.org. The Google map displays more than 120 book challenges--from Maine to Florida and from Long Island, New York, to San Francisco--that have occurred since the beginning of 2007, http://www.bannedbooksweeks.org.

The map is drawn from cases documented by the American Library Association and the Kids' Right to Read Project, which is sponsored by the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression and the National Coalition Against Censorship.

The Banned Books Week Web site was launched last year to highlight the displays and events that are mounted by hundreds of bookstores and libraries during Banned Books Week, the only national celebration of the freedom to read. It includes a state by state listing to help people find displays and events in their area. This year's Banned Books Week will be celebrated from Sept. 26 through Oct. 3.

More here.

Judge temporarily halts release school employees home addresses

After Pennsylvania State Education Association's petition to exempt school district employees' home addresses from public records, a state appellate court judge issued a temporary halt and is expected to schedule a hearing, the AP reported. The state's revised Right-to-Know Law exempts the home addresses of judges, law enforcement officers and minors from public records. The state's largest teachers' union wants the same treatment for school employees.

A state appellate court judge has ordered a temporary halt to releasing school district employees' home addresses listed on records requests made under Pennsylvania's new Right-to-Know Law.

The order issued Tuesday by Commonwealth Court Senior Judge Rochelle Friedman was made in response to a petition brought late last week by the state's largest teachers' union.

Friedman was expected to schedule a hearing on the Pennsylvania State Education Association's request to permanently end the release of school employees' home addresses.

More here.

So your kid's school is locked down, but they won't tell you?

That is basically how the Springfield School District in Missouri is interpreting new FERPA regulations. The district will report there is an emergency or lock down at an elementary or high school but will not identify which one, the Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader reported. School resource officers have also been redacting not only student's personal information but also the date of the incident from their reports.

This week, the Springfield school district is expected to unveil new guidelines for how to release emergency information to the public.

The district changes are triggered by the U.S. Department of Education enactment of new regulations to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act .

Springfield school officials say the changes likely will mean less disclosure of incident or emergency information.

More here.

Texas newspaper says FERPA doesn't exempt test records from FOIA

Beaumont Enterprise, a Texas-based newspaper, has asked courts to order the Tekoa Academy of Accelerated Studies to release student test scores. The paper had requested reading and math scores of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills through an FOIA. The school argues that FERPA makes these records confidential, even though the scores requested are not tied to individual students.

A Southeast Texas newspaper has been trying to get student test scores from a Port Arthur school for almost a year, and has now asked the courts to step in and order the school to comply with its request.

Hearst Newspapers II LLC, doing business as the Beaumont Enterprise, has petitioned Jefferson County District Court Judge Donald Floyd for a writ of mandamus against Tekoa Academy of Accelerated Studies.

According to the petition filed Jan. 28, the school has not released student scores from the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills which the paper requested under the Public Information Act.

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More here.

FOI at Work: School cafeterias not meeting inspection requirements

School cafeterias are required to obtain two annual inspections or risk losing funding from the National School Lunch Program. But only 12 states are reporting 90 percent or more of their schools in compliance, according to the Agriculture Department.

Nearly two-thirds of schools in New York state are not receiving the twice-yearly health inspections required by federal law to curb food poisoning, making the state among the nation's worst offenders.

Compliance is even lower in Monroe County, where almost eight in 10 schools were not inspected twice in the 2006-07 school year, the most recent on record at the state Education Department. One in four were not inspected at all.

Meanwhile, inspection reports reviewed by the Democrat and Chronicle showed that one in five public school cafeterias in Monroe County failed to meet health standards in the last two years.

More here.

Watching Them, Watching US

An interesting access question posed by a father in Colorado:

Every day, about 6,000 children take a bus to and from school in Greeley. On most of those buses are video cameras capturing their actions. The tape gives the district a tool to determine what to do if inappropriate behavior occurs.

Parents, however, aren't allowed to review the tape, and that leaves Mike Moskalski outraged. After his son was involved in a physical altercation on a bus in April and received a 10-day suspension from the bus, he wanted to review the tape.

Moskalski said his son was defending himself and did not start the fight. The other student received the same punishment. He wanted to see the tape to make sure. But Greeley/Evans School District 6 officials told him no.

"This is not really fair," he said.

Citing a federal student privacy law, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, officials from Greeley-Evans School District 6 say they cannot release the footage from buses to the public.

District officials would not comment about any specific case.

District 6 began retrofitting buses with video cameras about seven years ago. About 80 percent of the district's buses are fitted with cameras, with a cost of about $1,200 for each vehicle.

"Bus safety is very important," said Wayne Eads, chief operations officer for District 6. "Cameras are a way to protect students, to monitor what happens."

He said to allow a parent to view any footage, the district would have to either get releases from the parents of the other children on the tape or digitally blur out their faces, both of which are not financially realistic.

"This is about protecting the child," Eads said.

But wait a minute...this is not really the sort of record protected by FERPA....and come to think of it, are there not school bus videos I have seen in any number of states made public by FOI?

Of course, if police are involved, that's another matter, like here. Or here.
Help! If you have examples, send them along!

The rest of this story here.

ACLU Tennessee Seeks Info on Dress Codes

The American Civil Liberties Union of Middle Tennessee (ACLU-TN) should soon receive the information it has requested to monitor Metro Nashville Public Schools’ standard school attire policy, according to an attorney with the Metro legal department.

The information request was received by Metro Nashville Public Schools Oct. 15, and ACLU-TN requested a response within 30 days.

Starting this school year, all Metro students are required to wear “standard school attire” — a dress code that includes navy blue, black or khaki slacks, shorts or skirts and white or navy blue shirts with short or long sleeves and a collar. Each school may also select up to four additional colors for shirts.

Students have the right to opt out of standard school attire for medical or religious reasons, and ACLU-TN is working to monitor how the district processes those opt-out requests.

On Oct. 12, ACLU-TN submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to Director of Schools Pedro Garcia about attempts to secure exemptions from the standard school attire (SSA) policy. ACLU-TN asked to receive the information within 30 days of the request and followed up several times by phone, Weinberg said, but received no response until last week.

More here.

FOI At Work: A Great Series on a Shameful Secret...

Every year, Arizona teachers lose their jobs because they molest their students, say sexually inappropriate things, even sleep with them in some cases. But schools, protected by state law, routinely keep these incidents secret. And educators move on to other jobs with little consequence.

The East Valley Tribune takes a long look at the issue, thanks to a BUNCH of FOI requests. Be sure to check out the great searchable database of public records here.

AP Sexual Misconduct Story Raises Issues in Maine...

Gov. John Baldacci admitted Tuesday that a state statute aimed at protecting the confidentiality of educators who are stripped of, or denied, teaching certificates ultimately fails to protect the public.

As part of an in-depth probe into sexual misconduct in schools, The Associated Press recently tried to obtain teacher decertification records from Maine’s Department of Education.

The AP, which uncovered countless cases of abuse across the country during its seven-month investigation, even submitted a Freedom of Access request to gain access to Maine records.

The state DOE, however, denied that request, citing a law that prohibits the release of any information related to why teacher certificates have been suspended, revoked or denied.

Baldacci said the law clearly needs to be revisited.

"We have one of the most thorough systems in the country when it comes to background checks and fingerprinting teachers to protect the safety and well-being of our students in Maine," the governor said in a statement Tuesday. "The way it stands right now, a teacher in Maine can commit a noncriminal inappropriate act and have their license revoked without having that information released to other states. We need to change that policy to protect not only the children of Maine, but children in other states as well."

More here.

HUGE AP series on school sexual misconduct

The Associated Press used scores of public records in its massive, national investigation of sexual crime in America's schools. Here is one of many, many stories running across the country this week.

A total of 2,570 educators nationwide were punished for sexual misconduct from 2001-05, representing about a quarter of all educator misconduct cases in that time period. The total number of times an action was taken against a teacher's license for sexual misconduct was 2,625 (more than 50 teachers lost licenses in more than one state).

Licenses were revoked in 1,636 of the cases; surrendered in 440 cases; suspended in 376
cases; and denied in 108 cases. Other punishments were handed out in the remainder of the cases. Students were clearly identified as victims in at least 1,467 of the sexual misconduct cases. The victim was a young person, a category including students, unidentified youths, family members and neighbors, in at least 1,801 of the cases. Educators made physical contact in at least 1,297, or 72 percent, of the cases in which the victims were youths. The remainder
were cases that did not involve physical contact, including verbal sexual harassment and other offenses.

Among the findings:

-- There were criminal convictions in at least 1,390, or 53 percent, of the cases.

-- Nearly nine out of 10 of the educators punished for sexual misconduct were male.

-- At least 446 of the cases that the AP found involved educators who had multiple victims.

The seven-month investigation found 2,570 educators whose teaching credentials were
revoked, denied, voluntarily surrendered or limited from 2001 through 2005 following allegations of sexual misconduct.

Young people were the victims in at least 1,801 of the cases, and more than 80 percent of those were students. More than half the educators who were punished by their states also were convicted of crimes related to the misconduct.

Much, much more here.