Recently the United States District Court for the Eastern District of the California - Sacramento Division, ruled to hand over California public school records to attorneys of a parent group suing the state. The two parent groups that have filed the lawsuit against the California Department of Education (CDE) are a parent association group from the Morgan Hill Unified School District and California Concerned Parents Association, a group with members in 80 school districts throughout the state. The parent groups have accused CDE of alleged widespread, systemic non-compliance by local education agencies with special education laws. The suit also alleges the CDE fails to monitor, investigate and correct such non-compliance in accordance with the law. The CDE denies these allegations and is actively defending the litigation.
Visions In Education is not involved in the lawsuit and is not the subject of any of the suit’s allegations. Nonetheless, as a part of this lawsuit, CDE has been ordered by the court to release all data it has collected on general and special education students since January 1, 2008. The data will include names, addresses, social security numbers, test scores, disciplinary records, health and mental health records and more.
This release of information impacts the following groups of students/parents:
- The parent or guardian of a child (including an infant) with disabilities
- The parent or guardian of a student who is attending or attended a California school at any time since January 1, 2008
- Person over the age of eighteen who is attending or attended a California school at any time since January 1, 2008.
The court order can be found here: Notice of Disclosure of Student Records.
Parents have the right to file an objection form requesting that their children’s information will not be released. If you wish to object to the disclosure of your child(ren)’s personally identifiable information, the CDE provides an Objection Form (Update: CDE has shared that the “County” question in the form is referring to the county the school district is located in) that must be filed by April 1, 2016. Please note that if your children have attended multiple schools, and you choose to object, you will need to complete the form for each school they attended.
For more information regarding the release of this data and how you can file an objection with the court to not release your data, visit CDE’s Web site at http://www.cde.ca.gov/morganhillcase or contact CDE at 916.319.0800.
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