Senate Bill S4569

                                BILL NUMBER:S4569

TITLE OF BILL:  An act to amend the education law, in relation to
restricting the distribution of students' personally identifying
information and directing the commissioner of the department of
education to develop appropriate regulations regarding permitted
disclosure of such information

SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:

Section One of the bill amends a new section 2-c to the education law.

No public elementary or secondary school or college or charter school
shall sell or otherwise release personally identifying information
regarding any student to any third party.

Every student shall be assigned a unique identification number by use
of which student's information and individual reports may be accessed
by the student's school administrators, guidance counselors and
teachers and by the student's parents.

The provisions of this section shall not prohibit the use of the
school district or the state of unidentified aggregate data for the
purpose of tracking school attendance, curriculum tracking and overall
student progress, and for the application or qualification for federal
funds.
              

Section Two states that the commissioner of the department of
education is authorized and directed to promulgate all rules,
regulations and guidelines he or she deems necessary to allow parents
or guardians to consent to the disclosure or their child's information
to private third parties and to implement the provisions of this act
on or before the effective date.

EXISTING LAW: New law.

JUSTIFICATION:  Many public school parents have raised concerns about
the New York State Education Department's (NYSED) plans to share
confidential student information with the non-profit corporation in
Bloom Inc., with which the agency contracted to provide a cloud-based
K-12 student database A March 3, 2013 Reuters article about the
database noted that that for-profit tech companies and other
commercial vendors could have access to this data, and that the
company's own privacy policy states that it "cannot guarantee the
security of the information stored or that the information will not be
intercepted when it is being transmitted."

While there are potential benefits of integrating technological
advances into all facets of education, our State must not proceed with
any initiatives, however well-intentioned, that could compromise the
privacy of our public school students and their families.

This legislation mandates that any student data shared by a public
elementary or secondary school, college or charter school, with a
third party be stripped of personally identifying information,
including students' names, addresses and social security numbers and


instead use unique identifiers known by each student's school
administrators, guidance counselors, teachers and parents.

Without identifying information, the data provided to a third party
would be worthless for marketing purposes and student privacy would be
protected should the data be compromised. However, aggregate data
could still be used by districts to apply for Race to the Top Funding,
do curriculum evaluation, report attendance, etc.; and schools and
parents would be able to pull individual student records using the
unique identifiers to track performance, maintain course schedules and
report cards, etc.

LEGISLATIVE HISTORY: New bill

FISCAL IMPLICATIONS: Minimal

LOCAL FISCAL IMPLICATIONS: Minimal

EFFECTIVE DATE:  This act shall take effect on the first of July next
succeeding the date upon which it shall have become a law and shall
apply to all school years commencing on or after such date.