Video and news from our explosive April Town Hall meeting on student privacy

On April 30th we held a Town hall meeting at Brooklyn Borough Hall about the state and city plan to share personally identifiable student information with a corporation called inBloom inc. and other third party vendors.

About 150 people showed up, including:

•  two Regents (Regent Kathleen Cashin of Brooklyn and Regent Betty Rosa of the Bronx),
• two representatives from the State Education Department (Dennis Tompkins, Chief of External Affairs and Nicolas Storelli-Castro, Director of Governmental Relations), who listened to the presentations and the passionate objections of parents.
• Adina Lopatin, Deputy Chief Academic Officer of NYC DOE spoke and answered questions.  
  
• Unfortunately,  inBloom and the Gates Foundation refused invitations from our co-sponsor Assemblymember O’Donnell. 

Below are Part I and Part II of the event. Part I starts with some parent outbursts, followed by introductory remarks from Margaret Kelley of the Brooklyn Borough President’s office, Stephen Boese of the Learning Disabilities Association, and Adina and Leonie’s presentations.  Part II includes the comments and questions from the audience.

 Now please contact your legislators and urge them to support the Student Privacy bill!

Student Privacy & inBloom Town Hall meeting: part 1 from Class Size Matters on Vimeo.

 

Leonie Haimson gave a presentation about inBloom and DOE provided a  FAQ here.

Here are some of the revelations from the NYCDOE:

• The city and state have already shared confidential student data with inBloom.
• They don’t know how much they will have to pay for inBloom’s “services” starting in 2015.
• If there is a data breach from inBloom (as many people believe is nearly inevitable) the state will be legally and financially liable, since the Gates Foundation has insulated itself and inBloom from responsibility.

 

If this highly sensitive information leaks out, it  could lead to class action suits against the state for many millions of dollars. 

 

Student Privacy & inBloom Town Hall meeting: part 2 from Class Size Matters on Vimeo.