"Hot Topics"

Fairfax County Public Schools' internal report reveals long-time knowledge of rampant noncompliance with IDEA and FERPA.

Fairfax County Public Schools included an unredacted internal document—”Hot Topics” Region 4—with its response to a FERPA request I submitted. I did not request the specific document or personally identifiable information (PII) for other students.

I’m sharing it now because FCPS’ internal admissions of noncompliance are important for other parents to be aware of. To protect student privacy—something FCPS failed to do—I redacted all PII prior to publication.

Background

In February 2018, FCPS provided the “Hot Topics” Region 4 document within its response to a FERPA request I filed—two years before Special Education Action launched, and two years after I first discovered unredacted personally identifiable information (PII) in FCPS’s FERPA responses. Prior to this February 2018 release, FCPS had already disclosed PII for at least eight other students and families.

While reviewing the file, I noticed red marks throughout the file. I clicked on them and they revealed themselves to be tracked changes FCPS failed to fully remove—to include unredacted student names, special education identification, their lawyers, monies paid, and so on.

In addition to unredacted student PII, the content of the document was troubling. It included FCPS acknowledging longstanding issues that parents—including myself—have raised for years, such as such as failure to identify students eligible for special education, failure to identify students who have Dyslexia and implement programming with fidelity, and statements that it was concerned about its own ability to secure the privacy of student records.