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Alaska court rules school district must release terms of legal settlement
© 2004 Student Press Law Center
July 8, 2004
ALASKA — A state court ruled June 25
that a federal student privacy law does not prohibit disclosure of lawsuit
settlement terms reached by the Anchorage School District and that the school
district could not enter into confidential settlements because it is a public
body.
The court found that the district’s use of the Family
Educational Rights and Privacy Act as a justification for not releasing the
details of legal settlements was improper.
The issue arose when the
Anchorage Daily News discovered that the district settled a lawsuit and
kept the terms of the settlement confidential. The newspaper asked the district
to disclose the settlement agreement, citing a 1989 Alaska Supreme Court
decision that said the public has a right to know terms of settlements that
involve public money under the state open records law. The school district then
asked for clarification from the court, which ordered that the settlement be
unsealed.
The school district argued that a settlement agreement
involving a student is part of that student’s education record. FERPA
imposes financial penalties on schools that release education records without
consent.
A letter from the U.S. Department of Education’s Family
Policy Compliance Office to the school district’s lawyers states that a
settlement agreement between a student and the school district meets
FERPA’s definition of an education record. It also states that if an
institution had a policy of disclosing settlement agreements involving students
it risks losing all federal funding.
The court order stated that a
settlement agreement is not part of a student’s education
record.
“Nothing in the settlement touches on the issue of
education,” District Court Judge Sen Tan stated in the court
order.
As a result of the ruling, the district disclosed June 30 that it
paid $4.5 million — $1 million from the district and $3.5 million from its
insurance company — to the parents of a boy who attempted to hang himself
in November 1998 after intense bullying by other students at school, the
Anchorage Daily News reported. The boy suffered severe brain damage from the
incident.
Tan also noted that if the settlement were an educational
record, it could still be disclosed because the boy’s family gave
permission for it to be released.
“We still have a serious concern
with [personal] information disclosed in some of these settlements,”
Anchorage Schools Superintendent Carol Comeau said July 3 in the Anchorage
Daily News. “But the downside [to settling] is the feeling that
we’re trying to cover up things.”
Since the ruling, the
Anchorage Daily News has learned from other unsealed documents
that the district has settled 18 lawsuits with claims totaling $900,450 since
September 2000. The paper also reported that the settlements were originally
sealed at the district’s insistence.
The district has 30 days from
the release of the order to appeal. It has not yet decided if it will do
so.
For More Information: In re T.F., Case No. 3AN-02-494 (Alaska Super. Ct., June 25, 2004)
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