Like HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), FERPA (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), is greatly overused by the custodians of public records throughout Florida as an excuse to violate the law.
The HIPAA argument is what launched my career in public records advocacy. In 2008 School Boards around the state unsuccessfully attempted to frustrate my access to health insurance enrollment information based upon claims that it would violate HIPAA. In the end, most School Boards abandoned those silly arguments and those that did not were disabused of their mistaken notions about HIPAA in the courts.
The same thing happens with FERPA. When some educational institution does not want to produce records they just claim that the records are “educational records” and are therefore exempt. I’m amazed at how loosely School Boards interpret what qualifies as an “educational record.” If they were consistent then Year Books would be illegal. I’m sure that won’t happen because then they could no longer get kickbacks from the publishers of overpriced Year Books. (That would be a fun project, by the way.)
In an important case, covered by the Florida Times Union (Jacksonville), the 1st DCA (District Court of Appeals) ruled that a student’s complaint, sent via email, about an instructor, isn’t an educational record and therefore is not exempt from disclosure. The case should be instructive to School Boards around the state, but I doubt that it will be. After all, when they deny access, most folks just slink away in defeat. Even when someone vindicates the public’s right to access public records by taking errant officials to court, it’s our tax dollars that pay the freight.
Ironically, simply reading a few newspaper articles could save the public millions in legal fees. Then again, when they’re playing with OPM (Other People’s Money) who cares?
You know that a student actually has to filll out a form or at least make a request to keep their records secret right? I’d bet my bottom dollar they are not even being honest about other things. I recently had some issues with my college which just arose and may not be over yet BUT they actually disappeared me from classes about a year after I signed up for FERPA. Professor after professor related that I was not on their roster yet they somehow knew I was in the class or would “check on it”. BUT someone else later in the semester would say, why can’t I find you on the roster? If I took an online class I was invisible to the entire student body. I kind of liked it so I never complained because sometimes it saved me a lot of work or little fracases that students cause, I just stayed incognito. But it was WRONG, of course.
Colleges are bad news now. They are aiming to ride private on federal dollars by quietly weeding out people with problems passing math or english or they will just find anything. I have a very respectable GPA so do not refer to myself and thankfully I did my math core previous to now as I probably couldn’t get through it again. LOL !!! Anyway, you should then make them provide a summary of how many FERPA folks they have and their gender etc… because chances are they are flat out lying. And that is my experience. And they will cover for each other as though they both know where bodies are buried. I worked at HCC for about four years so ……
As well, this is also (HIPAA) used to cover up all manner of evil doings and insurance fraud and property theft by first responders. They’re setting up fake wrecks over here. It’s so obvious if you’ve ever watched a cartoon. Just like that. Money in the bank, overtime, wealth. Gives them plenty of time for other illicit activities while every other house in tampa is a crackhouse now.
(OH MY GOD !!!) I didn’t know THIS was YOU, too. Amazing what a good troublemaker you are !!
The HIPAA argument is what launched my career in public records advocacy. In 2008 School Boards around the state unsuccessfully attempted to frustrate my access to health insurance enrollment information based upon claims that it would violate HIPAA.
You see how what they tried afterwards dovetails with my assertion, correct? They tried to get teachers de-listed in property records so they could hide their property and their financial dealings just as they did for firemen and cops. It just lends to the ease of hiding the corruption and fraud. WHOO, I had a lot of respect for you before but that was a big one !!
That HIPAA stuff was just a big scam.
Okay, I think more what they do as you may know is to play both sides of the fence. I, for instance, have a form on another person which permits me to access his info. That is a very public form. However, it was only as a student (so far I can’t find it elsewhere) that I was asked with a radio button choice and it will ask it occasionally if I wanted my records kept UNpublic. I know it was only myself and one other person who had that done because the Professor showed me HER name with FERPA next to it on a list inadvertently. While he was showing me that mine still wasn’t there at ALL. So very very few students (IMO) have chosen to do so. Colleges are full of crooks. Go to Financial Aid and pretend you are going to enroll. LOL !!!! It’s like walking on to a street corner in NY …. everybody got a watch in their coat for sale. It’s sad. But that’s where the federal dollars are at so that is where the crooks are at. FOLLOW THE MONEY. Congrats on your article in the ledger. He’s an excellent reporter. I didn’t want to detract from the happiness of that but there’s a very important issue being talked about in the lakeland ledger about the folks trying to buy y’all’s electric. You don’t want that to happen. Those are publix people. Publix downplayed it but I hope the reporter will read it here: google those guys. And what publix downplayed is they ALREADY have a major shareholder and board member they share with TECO: Sherrill Hudson (M) Publix only likes the right kind of females and I say that only because I have dealt with them extensively. They’re mean with a few rare gems of decent, honorable human beings. BUT, they were flim-flamming that whole deal throught the lakelnad city council. Trust this: That’s a publix deal. When I first started having this issue with publix which caused alll the communication with their minions of darkness my power was shut off THREE TIMES. In less than 45 days. Do the math there. We only get billed once every 28 to 30 days. They just kept shutting it off. Every day for two weeks they shut it off between three and three eleven pm.
You can tell they have a shadow crew of corrupt employees because two guys will show up. One will be the normal guy with your address in his phone, the other will be the one who is there to give you leery messages. I know it sounds weird but we installed security cameras and it’s right there for all the world to see. PUBLIX will OWN lakeland and that will not be a good thing. Anyone who speaks up will be singled out by them. As well, our electric bill is now an eyepopping nearly 300.00 a month. We have a small house. It was perfectly normal and then just SHOT UP…………. we finally filed another complaint. We’ll all have 500 dollar electric bills before it’s over. Oh and then it dropped again (but not back to normal) I’ve seen next month’s…. it’s higher than the months previous …. Y’all don’t want Publix frontmen buying your power co. I’ll try to write that reporter later.
I thought I’d mention that our electricity flickered on and off more than 20 times this past Monday. Between the regular flickering hours as in the past (not sure I mentioned that here) The TECO engineer knows nothing of this. Then it went off completely for over ten minutes. Back on. Back off. This went on for over an hour. Historically, until I started having issues with Publix there has never been an occurrence of any type. Now it is regular. It’s bald-faced harassment and intimidation.