School Privacy Notices

Treena Shapiro discusses concerns raised over school privacy notices:

Sybil Arum's eighth-grade granddaughter came home this week worried that she was on the verge of being drafted by the military and sent off to war.

The reason for her fear was the Department of Education's annual privacy notice, which says contact information for secondary students as young as sixth-graders may be released to military recruiters unless the student, parent or legal guardian requests otherwise.

Arum, who is the child's guardian, quickly determined that her granddaughter was not being shipped off to Iraq, but became alarmed anyway.

"I'm very upset with the age level that this policy encompasses," she said.

DOE and U.S. Department of Defense officials, however, stress that the military is only interested in students who are 17 and older and will not be following up with students as young as sixth-graders.

"We don't just automatically release (the information to recruiters); it would have to be on request," said DOE spokesman Greg Knudsen. "Recruiters have told us that their interest is in juniors and seniors."

There's more to this than just information for recruiters. DPI has information on this issue here (parents can opt out. This page describes that process). MMSD's policy 4157 apparently describes the district's data privacy processes. Send me comments/questions on this: zellmer at mailbag dot com.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at December 29, 2004 7:58 AM
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