Student privacy bill spurs debate in Augusta
April 7, 2009 -
AUGUSTA, Maine — Students, parents and school administrators all told lawmakers the Department of Education should stop collecting the names of students disciplined by schools and keeping them in a database, but Commissioner Susan Gendron warned that could jeopardize all federal funds for education that come to the state.
“If we don’t comply with reporting requirements as the federal government specifies, we can in fact be required to return all and any federal dollars,” she told lawmakers. “IDEA [Individuals with Educational Disabilities Act] alone is $50 million a year.”
Gendron said that while the state is collecting the disciplinary information, it reports the information only as aggregate data without the students’ identification numbers. She said individual data are confidential by law and protected from release.
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