de Blasio continues to favor the privatizers by not requiring parent consent before giving charters access to DOE mailing lists

NeQuan McLean at April 15 protest vs charter mailings; credit: NY Daily News

Update:  NYC parents can opt out of the charter school mailings by entering their information online here.  To do so, you have to know your child's student ID number (OSIS number) which you can get from your school secretary or parent coordinator.

After vehement parent protests and a FERPA privacy complaint submitted to the US Department of Education, the DOE announced they will allow parents to opt out of charter mailings in the future, as the Daily News reported today.  This is NOT good enough, either from a policy or privacy standpoint.

Best practice to ensure student privacy would require parental consent, as the US Department of Education notes -  especially as many parents will not notice the opt out forms in backpack mail or their children may forget to share it with them.  

Best practice from the standpoint of good policy would be for the DOE not to allow charter schools to buy access to this information at all – which only helps them market their schools and expand their enrollment.

NYC is the ONLY district in the entire country that voluntarily helps charter schools expand in this  manner; even ostensibly pro-charter districts like Chicago don’t make this information available to charter schools. 
 At the recent NEA forum for presidential candidates, Mayor de Blasio aggressively postured about how he opposed charter schools:

“I’m going to be blunt with you, I am angry about the state of public education in America…“I am angry about the privatizers. I am sick and tired of these efforts to privatize a precious thing we need — public education. I know we’re not supposed to be saying ‘hate’ — our teachers taught us not to — I hate the privatizers and I want to stop them,” he said.

Charter schools already drain more than $2.1 billion from the DOE budget as well as take up valuable space in our overcrowded public school buildings.  Too bad that the Mayor continues to favor the privatizers in his actions, if not his words.

The email about this from Hydra Mendoza, DOE Deputy Chancellor is below.

---------- Forwarded message ---------

From: Mendoza Hydra <HMendoza3@schools.nyc.gov>
Date: Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 3:22 PM
Subject: Charter mailings

Hi All,

Per my “heads up” text regarding the changes to charter mailings through Vanguard, below please find more specific information.

• Today we are announcing that parents will be able to remove their address from the parent contact list DOE shares with Vanguard.
• Over the past several months, we've heard concerns from families about unsolicited outreach from charter schools as well as concerns from families who want access to this information. 
• We believe creating an avenue for families to remove their addresses meets the needs of all.
• Families will receive a letter and removal form in their back to school packet on September 9th informing them of their ability to remove their addresses. Families will be able to return the removal form within 30 days. 
• Additionally, families will be informed that they can go on the DOE website at any time to remove their addresses from the list.  We will have a direct link.
• Vanguard services for charter schools will be temporarily suspended until October 25 while refusal forms are collected and files are updated accordingly.  Charter schools will still be able to buy mailing lists as other organizations and companies do.
• The DOE will refresh the refusal list  4x per year –  October, December, February and April. 
• This information will be provided to all principals through the PWeekly.

Please let me know if you have any further questions!  Hope everyone is well and ready for the first day of school!

Thank you,

Hydra

Hydra Mendoza

Deputy Chancellor

Division of Community Empowerment, Partnerships and Communication

New York City Department of Education

52 Chambers Street| Suite 320 |NY, NY 10007

HMendoza3@schools.nyc.gov | (212) 374-2486

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Senator Flanagan's Privacy Bill unacceptable to parents; omits any mention of parental consent or opt out

For immediate release: Thursday, December 12, 2013

For more information contact: Leonie Haimson, leonie@classsizematters.org; 917-435-9329

SEN. FLANAGAN’S PRIVACY BILL UNACCEPTABLE TO PARENTS;

OMITS ANY MENTION OF PARENTAL CONSENT OR OPT OUT

Today, after holding public hearings throughout the state, Senator John Flanagan, the chair of Senate Education Department released a report with recommendations on the State’s current education policies and a bill on student privacy, S. 6007-2013.  Unfortunately, the report’s recommendations as written are ambiguous, and his bill is an inadequate response to the furor aroused by the state’s plan to share public schoolchildren’s personal and highly sensitive student data with the corporation called inBloom Inc.

Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters said, “In his report, Senator Flanagan calls for an immediate one year ‘delay in launching the full operation of the Education Data Portal,’ though there is no mention of this in his bill. We enthusiastically endorse this proposal if it means a halt to the state uploading any more personal information to the inBloom cloud. Yet the state could interpret this instead as a delay in the full implementation of the data dashboards, which would not prevent the possibility of breaches or the misuse of this highly sensitive information.” 

SED officials have admitted they have already uploaded much personal information to inBloom for the purposes of the “data portal roadshows” and have said they will not delay beyond January 15 the disclosure of student names, along with their grades, test scores, racial and economic status, disabilities, disciplinary records and much else, though there is a lawsuit pending in Albany County Supreme Court where on January 3, parents will ask the court to issue an permanent injunction to stop this from happening.

Haimson pointed out, “The Flanagan bill, S. 6007, is weak and contains fewer restrictions on the disclosure of student information than the Personal Protection Law passed by the New York State legislature in 1984, which remains on the books and is the basis for our lawsuit.  This new bill would omit any requirement for parental consent or opt out before children’s most sensitive data could be disclosed or re-disclosed to third parties, or shared with for-profit vendors.”

While the bill does allow districts, as opposed to parents, to opt out of having student data uploaded to the NYSED “Educational data portal,” it does not specify whether this means uploaded to the inBloom cloud or to the data dashboard vendors.

Haimson added: “The bill also calls for a privacy officer to be appointed by the State Commissioner, who would develop a “Parent Bill of Rights.”  Yet there is little reason to believe that any such document would contain requirements for parental consent, given the current Commissioner’s disdain for parents and his insistence that he alone should be able to control who receives children’s most personal data.”

Karen Sprowal, a NYC parent of a special needs child and a plaintiff on the lawsuit, says:  “Eight out of the nine inBloom states have now listened to parents and severed all ties with inBloom or put their data sharing plans on hold. In contrast, Commissioner King insists on going ahead in the face of huge opposition from parents, school board members, Superintendents, and elected officials from both parties. All these people recognize the need to protect our children from the devastating harm that would come to them if this personal information leaked out.  In contrast to the two bills already filed in the NY Senate, S5930 by Senator Martins and S5932  by Senator Robach, which both passed by the Assembly last session with bipartisan support, this new bill would not stop the state sharing information with inBloom and would provide penalties only after breaches did occur.  The damage would already be done to my son and other children. It is imperative that parental consent should be included in this bill.  Without this fundamental right, the bill has no teeth and will not save our children from our worst fears.”

Mona Davids, President of NYC Parents Union and a parent plaintiff in the lawsuit said:  “Yesterday, the NY State School Board Associations released a survey showing that 75% of school board members say that districts should have the right to opt out of inBloom, and an even large number, 78% say that parents should have that right. If you polled parents throughout the state who are outraged at this plan, I’m sure you could get even higher numbers.  It is every parent’s ethical duty and inherent right to be able to decide who sees their children’s most sensitive data – which if breached or misused could severely damage their futures for the rest of their lives.  That Senator Flanagan refuses to acknowledge that right in his bill is an insult to all parents, and suggests that he has not taken our concerns seriously.”

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