Parents who were angry at the Fulton County school system for killing their charter school are now raising another complaint.
They say system officials violated the privacy of their children when they released an audit of Fulton Science Academy Middle School that included the names of 68 students who traveled to Turkey on a field trip. The parents say the disclosure violated federal student privacy law.
The county school board denied the 10-year-old school's charter renewal application in December, citing concerns about management and finances. Then, last week, the school system released an audit that accused the nationally acclaimed school of spending taxpayer money to hire workers from overseas, running international field trips without proper supervision and giving business to a related nonprofit. Charter school officials have denied they did anything wrong.
Fulton officials admit they erred on the privacy issue. "When it was discovered that information containing student names was inadvertently included," said school system spokeswoman Samantha Evans, officials "took immediate action to rectify the situation."
The names were removed, but parents say that took a week.
By then, said Janet Turko, the mother of a 13-year-old boy named in the audit, the information had made its way to news media websites. "Our children's names are out there," she said Wednesday.
Kim Dietel, the mother of a 14-year-old boy named in the audit, said the release worried her because of the negative publicity surrounding the academy. "The blogs have gotten nasty," she said. "What if they turn on the kids?"
Dietel said her husband filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's Family Policy Compliance Office and that other parents were doing the same.
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act generally requires school officials to ask for written consent from parents before releasing personally identifiable information about their child's education records.
The U.S. Department of Education helps officials who may have violated the law return to compliance, a spokesman said. The federal government could cut off funds if local officials refuse to cooperate, the spokesman said.
But Evans, the Fulton schools spokeswoman, said system officials are reviewing their public records disclosure process to ensure there is no repeat incident "because student safety and privacy is such an important issue."
Officials and parents at the former charter school are bitter because the school system's decision to deny their charter renewal killed a high-achieving public school. The state rejected the school's appeal in May.
The academy was among four public schools in metro Atlanta to win the U.S. Department of Education's national Blue Ribbon School of Excellence designation last fall.
Academy officials will still open their doors next fall, but as a private school with 150 students instead of a public one with 500.
Paul Tardif, who has one boy at the middle school and another who previously attended, expects the school to recover -- someday. "It took 10 years to build it up," he said. "I believe that they can do it again, but it'll take time."
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