Do you get an uneasy feeling when the legislature is in session?  I do, and I’ve realized that it’s not just because of what our solons might do.  The possibilities for mischief from that quarter are endless of course.  But there’s more.  It’s also the things that you learn about, that you hadn’t quite known before, things that are somewhat alarming.

The legislation in question seems simple enough, a reasonable sounding title and all: An Act To Protect Student Privacy while Complying with Federal Law.

The proposal itself has the virtue of being short;  not a lot of paper wasted there. [Wait a minute! Aren't we pro-paper? -- Ed. Yes we are, but I was just emphasizing that the bill drafters kept their verbiage succinct. -- DS]  Here’s the text.

The public hearing Monday, according to Mal Leary’s account (”Student privacy bill spurs debate in Augusta“, BDN, 4/7/09) caused quite a flutter.  I urge you to read the full story. It’s likely that you’ll be aflutter too.

Here’s an excerpt:

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.

“The DOE has no compelling need to know this information that would override the rights of our students and their families,” said Patricia Hopkins, superintendent of Camden area schools. “The DOE has a data collection concern that it has chosen to solve at the expense of student privacy instead of protecting that privacy.”

She and other speakers argued there is no assurance that the department can keep the information confidential once it is collected. She said there have been frequent and well-publicized reports of data breaches at major corporations and at the federal government.

The question that isn’t answered is what other states are doing.  Are forty-nine other states collecting this information?  It doesn’t seem likely.

Here’s a partial answer (from the MPBN April 6 report “State Legislators Hear Testimony In Favor of Student Privacy”)

Gendron was the only person who testified against the bill, and she says it could be difficult and costly to separate personal information and offenses into two different databases.  “Can the system look very different? Could it be maintained locally? We heard that some of that data is expunged upon graduation. Federal government, in an audit, would not accept that. Data would have to be maintained for a period of time, depending on when an audit happened.  Either on a state level or the local level, somewhere that information has to be maintained.”

While only three other states submit student names with offenses dating back to elementary school, Gendron says 23 other states are in the process of changing their databases and may end up with a system like Maine’s.

Scott McFarland, principal of Mount Desert Elementary School says he is deeply uncomfortable submitting students’ names and misbehavior to the government.  “I sat down and I had to make a decision about entering a name, and I felt dirty. It just didn’t feel right. I’ve been a person all my life that have dedicated my cause to the children in my school. And it’s our job to do right for kids, and this is not right.”

Amen!