Thursday, October 22, 2015

Cease and Desist letter sent today to Eva Moskowitz of Success Charters

A FERPA complaint to the US Dept of Education Family Compliance Office will follow soon.


October 22, 2015

Eva Moskowitz, CEO
Success Academy Network
95 Pine Street, Floor 6, New York, NY 10005
By US Postal Service Priority Mail and email to: eva.moskowitz@successacademies.org

Dear Ms. Moskowitz; 

I demand that you immediately remove the letter you wrote to PBS and sent to the press on October 19, that contained details of my son’s disciplinary record and is posted at [link removed] , as well as the second follow up letter you posted and sent on October 21 at [link removed.]

As you are well aware, regulations governing compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 require that educational agencies and institutions obtain a parent’s signed and dated written consent before they are allowed to share non-directory personally identifiable information from a student's education records to third parties (34 CFE 99.30).

Some of the details of my son’s disciplinary history are accurate but many are not.  In any case, I was not contacted at any time beforehand, and I did not give my consent to the disclosure of any part of his education record.

In fact, your first letter includes an email from John Merrow of PBS, saying that I “was unwilling to release [my] son’s records.”  This is further documented by PBS, in their response to the letter, in which they write: “the mother was not willing to allow Success Academy to release her son’s school records.”  You yourself admitted that I was “refusing to waive her son’s privacy rights.”

Your first letter has now been linked to by many blogs and media outlets, including the PBS website.  Your action by disclosing this information which contains significant inaccuracies have caused me and my son great harm, and I demand that you immediately take it down from your website. 

This disclosure of my son’s disciplinary records without my consent is not only unethical, but also a serious violation of federal law. I hereby demand that you immediately cease and desist from causing further harm to my son’s privacy rights by removing the letter from your website, and ending all unauthorized disclosures. I also demand that you produce an accurate record of all third parties to whom you specifically disclosed my son’s non-directory information without my consent.

I will follow up with the remedial steps you need to take to mitigate the damage caused by your unlawful conduct, and to schedule a complete review of all of my son’s school records to correct the inaccurate and libelous information the school has apparently inserted in his education records.


Sincerely,

Fatima Geidi
[address and email removed]

8 comments:

Left of Center said...

I hope this parent not only publicizes this unethical violation, but sues the b . . . h.

Kathy said...

Eva Moskowitz is out of control.

Patrick Walsh said...

Finally, the media begins to shed a little light on the ruthless machinations of this nasty, manipulative harpy. May it continue.

elmonte08 said...

MORE #CharterChicanery

Mad momma said...

Evil Moskowitz should be run out of town!

Anonymous said...

I cannot see how Eva isn't deeply ashamed of herself. She runs a system that sends 5 year olds to the brink of emotional breakdown over ACADEMIC performance, such that the words "developmentally inappropriate" don't even come close to portraying the cruelty. Then she publicizes one child's reaction without the least hint of realization that it was HER FAULT in the first place, and insinuates that there's something wrong with the child? I say that kid was justifiably speaking up for his rights in the only way a child that young would know how. The market-based model of school choice (competition, test-score, charter-based) forces our children to focus on stuff (testing) that benefits adult school leaders not students. Those kids are being stripped of their most precious learning and brain-development years, so that Eva can trumpets SA's test scores, reap accolades, create a personal dictatorship, and stroke her own ego. Our schools need to have the freedom to allow kids to experiment, take risks, ask questions, create, and learn that making mistakes is an integral part of becoming deep thinkers and inventors.

Francesco Portelos said...

Does anyone know if Ms. Geidi followed through with this FERPA complaint and what came of it? Did the NYCDOE get involved in launching an investigation?

Leonie Haimson said...

Eventually Success Academy deleted the message from their website- but note before a huge amount of damage was done. The US Education Dept. never responded to her complaint but presumably contacted Ms Moskowitz about the violation of her student's privacy.