FERPA Violation: Willow Springs Elementary School Students’ Privacy Violated

While FCPS has inadvertently provided me information about dozens of other FCPS students and staff, I’m not alone in this dubious honor.

The documents below were given to another FCPS parent and include information about children other than her own. She didn’t ask to receive this information. FCPS provided it to her in the course of providing other documentation to her.

When privacy breaches occur, FCPS is supposed to contact families, but that isn’t always the case. My experience is that I’ve only been made aware of breaches after I found out about them myself—and FCPS only sent letters to other families after I or another parent made FCPS and/or the parents aware of the breach.

Some of the documents below fall on the benign side, but it is another indicator of FCPS’ inability to maintain privacy of even the most basic of information.

This Health Conditions list shares students’ ID numbers, their classes, their grades, their gender, and their health conditions—all of which is information that leads to the identity of the child. In addition, the names of two children appeared in full. FCPS is responsible for the black marks. I cleared out the information that could lead to personal identification before posting it here.

This is a list of students with 504 Plans. Although all but one name was blacked out by FCPS, all of the student ID numbers, the names of the students’ teachers, and their grades are included. All of this leads toward personally identifying the children. I redacted the one student’s name and all of the student ID numbers.

This is one of the emails that falls in the benign category. It’s basic communication between parent and teacher. However, privacy is privacy. FCPS should not have released anything about the child to any parent other than his own. I redacted the name of the child and parent before posting here.

Another benign document, but a FERPA violation just the same. I redacted the names of the children and the individuals emailed.

Another benign document, but a FERPA violation just the same. I redacted the names of the children and the individuals emailed.

Another benign document, but a FERPA violation just the same. I redacted the names of the children and the individuals emailed.

Another benign document, but a FERPA violation just the same. Someone actually tried to redact it, but did a sloppy job. The parent’s email was blacked out, but her name and cell phone number, and the name of her child, appear in a few places. I redacted these before posting.