Concerns with student privacy, Teenspace, charter school mailings & more

Sept. 17, 2024

1.Last week, the organization I co-chair, Parent Coalition for Student Privacy sent a letter to the Mayor, the Chancellor and Health Commissioner expressing our concerns about the city’s contract with and promotion of Teenspace, an online mental health service which collects highly sensitive data from students. According to its privacy policy, the company uses the data for marketing and shares it with other companies in ways that would be illegal if the contract were with DOE, instead of the Dept of Health. The letter was co-written and co-signed by the NYCLU and AI for Families, and was reported on by Daily News , Chalkbeat , State Scoop and K12 Dive. Since we sent the letter, we discovered that the parent company, Talkspace, has been sued in California for sharing the personal information of website visitors and clients with TikTok as well, including the data of minors. Though in the letter we asked for a meeting with city officials to discuss our concerns, we have so far not gotten a response.

Instead, over the weekend, Chancellor Banks again hyped the use of Teenspace at a Harlem Town Hall, and today he said he planned to expand the use of AI in our schools, which could further degrade student privacy and steer their futures via discriminatory algorithms. In any case, please warn your child that if they sign up for Teenspace or are lured into answering the very personal questions on its website that this information may be exploited and shared.

2. Another privacy issue: In 2019, after years of protest by parents & FERPA complaints, DOE said they would allow parents to opt out of charter school mailings via an online link by Oct. 31 of each year, so if you don’t want to receive them, you should sign up now. Nevertheless, many parents report that even when they do opt out, they receive mailings anyway – and now now some have said that they also receive phone calls from charter schools, asking them to apply. If you are one of these parents, please let me know by emailing us at info@studentprivacymatters.org

3. We are also concerned about the use and protection of the vast amount of personal data collected about 3K and PreK students, and uploaded to a for-profit company that owns the DOE’s early education curriculum, Creative Curriculum/Teacher Gold. If you are a parent of a 3K or PreK child worried about their privacy, please also contact us at the above address.

4. But our main focus remains class size.   We continue to be troubled about DOE’s refusal to adopt an actual multi-year class size reduction plan with any chance of success. I am quoted about this at AmNY here. The Mayor’s Management Report was released yesterday, with data on class size and overcrowding that provides further evidence that the city has no real plan to comply with the law, as I discuss here. We also have an updated FAQ on the law and its implementation so far.

5. Our latest Talk out of School podcast tries to make sense out of all the swirling stories of corruption and cronyism at City Hall and Tweed, which I discuss with co-hosts Daniel Alicea and Kaliris Salas-Ramirez. You can listen to it here.

Finally, If you want a briefing for your parent organization or community group on the issue of Teenspace and other ways in which the city is not properly protecting student privacy, or DOE’s failure to take sufficient action to lower class size, please email us or respond to this message.

Thanks as always for your support,

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
phone: 917-435-9329
leonie@classsizematters.org

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