The Department of Education last week announced investigations in in Maine and California for alleged parents’ rights violations through the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA.
FERPA is a federal law that gives parents the right to have access to their children’s education records. The law also grants them the right to seek to have the records amended and the right to have some control over the disclosure of personally identifiable information from the education records.
The student takes on more control when he or she turns 18 or enters a postsecondary institution of education.
Earlier last week the U.S. Department of Education also announced its investigation into Portland (Oregon) schools for reported Title IX violations.
Gender, or a liberal reimagining of what that means, is the epicenter for all three investigations.
The contested orders of Washington, D.C., District Court judge James Boasberg is far from the first federal injunction issued against the Trump agenda. It’s the most prominent in the news cycle right now.
The two liberal states have not directly responded to the investigations but it's not hard to see lawsuits springing forth.
From a legal standpoint, Maine is arguing the “gender plans” created at school in support of a student’s alleged gender preference are not “education records” and are therefore not subject to parents’ access and a right to know.
The Department of Education says it’s found violations in “dozens” of Maine school districts.
Maine has a weak argument, Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for education studies at Family Research Council, said on Washington Watch Friday.
A gender plan, she said, is “part of the process of putting children on this pipeline to gender transition,” Kilgannon told show host Jody Hice.
“Any kind of record that's created at the school for your child is an educational record and a parent has a right to see it. This idea of a secret gender transition plan flies completely in the face of protections that are guaranteed under FERPA,” Kilgannon said.
California is holding fast to its new state law, passed last summer and enacted on Jan. 1 of this year, that blatantly chose school secrets over parents. Alarmed by several parent-friendly school policies, the Democrat-dominated legislature created a new state law that prohibits public school districts from informing parents if their child seeks to “transition” or exhibits signs of gender confusion at school.
Trump’s DOE says it is “concerned” about the role played by the California Department of Education either directly, or indirectly, in the new anti-parent law.
For Portland, the allegations involve a male track athlete competing with girls and using their locker rooms with girls present.
Parents have ally at DOE
Kilgannon is urging parents to engage the U.S. Department of Education at its website, where they can report on gender-related abuse that is impacting their public school.
Reports should be filed within 180 days of learning of the problem, Kilgannon said.
“Even if it's past 180 days, if you know that this is happening in your school system, I still think it would be good for you to make a report because it may be that it corroborates some other reports that are there and that it puts the department over the top for doing an investigation,” Kilgannon said.
Violence is a problem, too
Gender identity is a problem but so is violence, Kilgannon said.
The reporting mechanism focuses on gender but could enlighten the DOE about violence as well.
Some schools have turned a blind eye to “death threats” made by one child against another child because of perceived privacy rights of the child making the threat, Kilgannon said.
“Obviously, a parent needs to know about that situation," she said. "There needs to be a conversation about that. It’s that kind of situation that this effort with the Department of Education, that they're hoping to correct.”
