Palo Alto CAC response to California Dept of Education Lawsuit/Morgan Hill Concerned Parents Association

It is the position of the CAC that parents should have as much information as possible to make an informed decision about this litigation and their children’s right to privacy.  You may read articles, blogs, and opinions on this subject, and some information obtained over the internet may be misleading.  With that in mind, the CAC is creating this dedicated page on our website where we will post factual information, such as court documents, organization statements from advocate groups, legal updates, media statements, and links to the CDE website for your convenience. We will work with the district leadership, the PTA and other community groups to provide you with accurate information.

“The Court in Morgan Hill Concerned Parents Association v. California Department of Education, 2:11-cv-03471-KJM-EFB issued an order addressing the release of student information. The Plaintiffs in this case are families who are concerned that the California Department of Education (CDE) is not fulfilling its duties to ensure that students with disabilities are receiving free appropriate public education. The Court has been working with counsel for the plaintiffs and counsel for CDE to structure release of information necessary for discovery. Throughout the litigation, the court has worked to safeguard student privacy, including appointing an IT expert to ensure that information that is required to be shared as part of the lawsuit is protected. Most recently, the court issued an order directing that the data base will not be shared outside of the CDE and directing counsel for the parties to work with the IT expert to determine how CDE will run queries of the data base to provide information that is necessary to be released to plaintiffs’ counsel as part of the litigation.

The court noted in its order that it had been flooded by objections to the release of information.

The court believed that, because of the hyper speed and ease of misinformation in the social media age, most of the parents objecting were objecting because they believed, erroneously, that their student’s information would be released to the general public. As this was never the intent, nor what would happen to the information, the court determined that it needed to take a different path in order for the plaintiffs to receive reasonable enough discovery to prove their claims. “