Kevin Kiley: “The second ongoing investigation relates to California's policy of forcing school districts and schools to keep secrets…”

“The second ongoing investigation relates to California's policy of forcing school districts and schools to keep secrets from parents about their own children. The U.S. Department of Education's Student Privacy Policy Office has launched an investigation into the California Department of Education for alleged violations of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, FERPA, which gives parents the right to access their children's educational data. It is alleged the California Department of Education has abdicated the responsibilities FERPA imposes because of a new California State law that prohibits school personnel from disclosing a child's gender identity to that child's parents. What happened in California is there are a number of school districts that have said that they are simply going to hide this information from parents. They will not tell parents if their child changes their name or pronouns or anything like that. There are other districts that say that this is not right. We actually want to make sure we are being open and transparent with parents. They passed their own policy, saying, no, our policy is that we believe that parents have a right to know this. What the State then did is they started suing these districts. They tried to get legal judgments against them, saying they were required under law to lie to parents about their children. Fortunately, those lawsuits are being rejected.…”