Education Department opens new inquiries into schools’ parent notification policies

WASHINGTON — The Education Department announced new investigations and enforcement efforts Nov. 9 over allegations that school districts withheld information from parents about students’ gender identity and school records.

The department said its Student Privacy Policy Office would examine compliance with two federal laws: the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment. The announcement describes allegations and the administration’s legal position, not findings already established against every district named.

According to the department’s published statement, the inquiries involve Albuquerque and Santa Fe public schools in New Mexico and Pennsbury School District in Pennsylvania. The department also said it was working with the Justice Department on enforcement involving Pennsylvania’s Pine-Richland School District.

The administration alleges that policies or practices kept parents from receiving information about names, pronouns, support plans or records. Education Secretary Linda McMahon framed the actions as an effort to enforce parental rights and classroom transparency.

The announcement alone does not resolve the districts’ individual circumstances, the contents of particular records or whether each alleged practice violates federal law. Those questions are the subject of the inquiries.

Two laws with different functions

FERPA governs education records at institutions receiving applicable federal education funds. Its regulations address parents’ access to records, requests to correct inaccurate or misleading information and disclosure of personally identifiable information.

The rules generally transfer the rights to a student when the student turns 18 or attends a postsecondary institution. They also contain exceptions and procedural requirements. A broad political statement about parental access is therefore not a complete description of every situation covered by the law.

The Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment addresses different issues. The department’s explanation says it governs certain surveys, analyses and evaluations involving protected areas such as mental health, sexual attitudes, religious beliefs and political beliefs. Its requirements depend on the activity and the source of funding, among other factors.

A records-access question and a survey-consent question can arise in the same dispute, but they are not interchangeable. Determining which law applies requires identifying what a school actually collected, maintained, administered or disclosed.

What investigators will need to establish

The department says withholding records or treating information as temporary does not erase applicable FERPA obligations. Its announcement cites earlier guidance and warns that violations can lead to enforcement and potentially the loss of federal funding.

That warning is not an announcement that funding has already been withdrawn from all the named districts. An inquiry, a violation finding and a funding consequence are separate stages.

The distinction matters for families and school employees reading competing descriptions of the dispute. A policy’s wording, how employees applied it and what happened in an individual case can present different evidentiary questions.

District records, communications and responses will be important to evaluating the allegations. The announcement does not include a full response from each district, so the administration’s account should not be treated as the entire record.

The next stage

The immediate development is expanded federal scrutiny of parent notification and student information practices. Whether the named districts violated either statute remains to be determined through the relevant proceedings.

For parents, the two laws provide a framework for understanding specific rights and procedures. For schools, the disputes place renewed attention on how written policies, informal practices and records systems interact. A final resolution will require more than the broad labels used by either side in the political debate.