Carlucci Co-Sponsors Bills For More Parental Control Over Student Information

Parents across New York State have been up in arms in recent weeks over The Race To The Top initiative and sharing of student information and now have taken legal action. One local official is pushing new legislation to limit the information sharing. State Senator David Carlucci (D-Rockland/Westchester) announced Thursday night he is co-sponsoring two bills to give parents and guardians greater control over their children’s data.

Carlucci spoke at a raucous Clarkstown Board of Education meeting during which the trustees voted for the district to remain in the Race To The Top program despite concerns and opposition voiced by parents. He said the proposed legislation would clarify and give parents and guardians the authority to approve the sharing of information, which they do not currently have. 

“Right now parents and guardians don’t have any authority over their child’s data and that’s unfortunate in the State of New York,” he said.”  So I’ve co-sponsored legislation S5930 that would give the authority to parents to guardians that they would have to consent to sharing data with a third party vendor. This is an issue about a third party vendor and not about state aid.”

Carlucci told the board and district administrators that they should do what they feel is right about Race To The Top but that if they opted out as other districts have across Rockland and Westchester, he would work to make sure state aid was not impacted.

“What you decide to do I’ll be 100 percent behind you fighting to get that state aid,” he said.

When the possibility of losing more than Race To The Top funds but up to $29 million of state aid was brought up, Carlucci said he had not heard about that possibility. 

“I encourage you to do what you want to do with that because I haven’t found any district that’s penalized by the state education department that decided not to share that student data,” he said.

The third party vendor that will be receiving student data from the state education department is Inbloom.

Carlucci’s office provided the following information about the two bills.

S5930 was introduced on September 5th. The companion Assembly Bill A7872-A already passed.

Purpose
This bill protects personally identifiable information from release to certain third parties. 

Summary 

This will allow parents of students and students of 18 years or age or older to request that personally identifiable information and/or biometric record not be disclosed to certain third parties and prohibits SED and schools that receive the request from disclosing such information of that particular student, except in cases where they are required to do so by law, court order or subpoena, state or federal audits or evaluations to certain authorized representations, or for health or safety emergencies. This legislation also takes into consideration charter schools and allows them to share information with the corporate entity that the charter school was formed in conjunction with. 

S5932 was introduced in the state senate on September 11th. The companion Assembly bill A6059-A passed in June.

Purpose
This bill would protect student privacy by prohibiting the release of personally identifiable information about individual students to certain third parties unless; there is parental consent, or a student who is 18 or older consents, or unless certain exceptions apply. 

Summary
Creates a new section of the Education Law ‘Release of personally identifiable student information’ and also sets out the limits on disclosure to contractors and consultants, as well as disclosure for commercial use. Authorized representatives--The department and district board of education shall only designate parties that are under their direct control to act as their authorized representatives to conduct any audit or evaluation, or any compliance or enforcement activity in connection with legal requirements that relate the state or district supported educational programs, when any such audit, evaluation or activities requires or is used as the basis for granting access to personally identifiable student information. 

This legislation also sets out data integrity practices and provides for civil penalties and enforcement.