Check out our Parent Toolkit for Student Privacy, give your ideas to NYC Council on how to reduce school overcrowding, and more!

May 18, 2017

1. This week our Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, along with the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, released a new Parent Toolkit for Student Privacy: A Practical Guide for Protecting Your Child’s Sensitive School Data from Snoops, Hackers and Marketers. We think this is a uniquely valuable resource because it will not only inform parents what legal rights they have to protect their children’s privacy, and points out red flags to look for in school vendors’ privacy policies, but also gives parents advocacy tools to promote best practices in their schools that go beyond federal and state law.   The toolkit is here; and here is our oped in the WaPost Answer Sheet about it. We are co-sponsoring a free webinar for parents on Tuesday evening, May 23 at 8 PM EST with Parents Across America and CCFC on how you can use the toolkit. Please sign up now!

2. For those of you who live in NYC, we have been advocating for reforms to the school siting and planning process for some time. Not only is the NYC school capital plan badly underfunded and inadequate to meet the needs of more than 550,000 students crammed into overcrowded schools, but overcrowding is likely to become worse in the near future with the rapid development and population growth occurring throughout the city. Meanwhile, it can take a decade or more for the School Construction Authority to acquire a site and build a new school. The NYC Council has an internal working group tasked with coming up with proposals to make the school planning and siting process more efficient, and they’re looking for input and feedback from parents and others. Please send them your ideas by June 15 here.

3. Finally the NYS Education Department is holding hearings throughout the state on their proposal for a new school accountability system. See Eduardo Hernandez’s testimony at the Bronx hearings last Tuesday on what’s wrong with the current proposal.   As his testimony points out, the new system could cause schools with high percentages of English language learners or homeless students to be mislabeled as failing, and could lead to even more testing and a narrowed curriculum at your child’s school. For more on this, see the CSM/NYSAPE talking points on how the system should promote smaller classes, more equity and a holistic education for our state’s students instead.

And remember, save the date for our Skinny Awards June 20 — more info soon!

thanks Leonie