Michaelangelo Conte reports:
A Sherman Avenue charter school did not access the Jersey City school system’s computers to obtain personal information about district students for a mailer, a district official said this afternoon.
The school district had been concerned that the METS Charter School obtained the information form the city school data system but an investigation has revealed it did not, Jersey City Public Schools spokeswoman Maryann Dickar said today.
“It appears that the charter school was using a list it obtained three years ago, though the current leadership of METS Charter has stated that it did not know how that list was obtained,” Dickar said in a statement. “Additional checks of the district’s data systems also indicated that there was no breach, nor could METS Charter School staff have accessed district information from the district’s current system.”
Read more on NJ.com.
Some coverage elsewhere suggests that the charter school had actually obtained the list from the Board of Education, but it’s not clear if that has been confirmed, and if so, why the board had provided it. If they did provide it, it might be a FERPA breach.