Southold Superintendent demands right to opt out of data sharing, citing state's contract with inBloom

Superintendent David Gamberg credit: Suffolk Times

As more and more districts give back their Race to the Top funds to protect student privacy, so they don't have to sign up for data dashboards that will be populated with personal data from the inBloom cloud, they also realize that this does not spare their student data from being uploaded by NYSED anyway.   

Commissioner King has been adamant that personal and highly sensitive data from the entire state's public school population will be shared with inBloom whether districts sign up for dashboards or not.  
See this comment from the School board President in Spackenkill NY, Arij Kurzum, upon returning these funds and turning down the dashboards, because it "was what people in the community wanted and the reaction seems favorable.

“I think our job is not done by just pulling out of Race to the Top,” she said. “The state is still going to get that information ... and they’re still going to put it in inBloom.”

But see the letter written to inBloom by Superintendent, David Gamberg of Southhold LI, below.  He identified a provision in the state's contract with the Shared Learning Collaborative (which later became inBloom Inc.) allowing districts to opt out -- despite what the state currently maintains. 

The relevant clause appears on page 9 of Exhibit C, of the Data Privacy and Security Plan, under the heading “District Opt out from SLI.” It states: “If a school district decides they no longer wish to use the SLI system, they may request that district student data be deleted from the SLI data store."

The SLI stands for the Shared Learning Infrastructure, inBloom's data system. According to NYSED officials, this contract or "service agreement" has not been amended or updated since it was signed last year, and it is still posted at the SED website here.  

Other Superintendents should emulate Southhold's demand, and follow up with a lawsuit if inBloom does not agree to comply.

Letter to InBloom from Southold-1.pdf