5 months ago
Every week, we find answers to your questions through our Get Answers segment. You send us your questions, then we hunt down the answers for you. Conshelloah Clayton from Byromville, Dooly County wants to know: Should parents be allowed to watch videos of the bus when their child or children are written up for misbehaving? The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, is a federal law meant to keep students' educational records safe. Under FERPA, schools may release, without consent, "directory" information like a student's name, address, telephone number and birthday. But they need consent to release any information about a student that includes direct or indirect personal identifiers. That includes social security numbers, finger prints or DNA sequence along with other things. But according to the US Department of Education, images of students captured on security tapes that are maintained by the school's law enforcement unit are not considered education records under FERPA. So, those videotapes can be shared with parents of students who are in the video and with outside law enforcement. The Department of Education suggests that schools that don't have a law enforcement unit consider designating someone to determine when a school would disclose a security tape. So if your school has a law enforcement unit, there's no law prohibiting you from watching your child in a security video. Although some schools, including Bibb and Dooly County told us they don't generally release security tapes to parents. If you have a concern or complaint concerning FERPA, you can contact the Family Policy Compliance Office of the US Department of Education at (202) 260-3887. If you have a question and you'd like us to get answers for you, just go back to our home page at www.13wmaz.com and click on Get Answers about halfway down the page.
