NJ school district says it mistakenly released names of elementary students who were opted out of controversial sex-ed program

The public school district in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, said it mistakenly released the names of close to 100 elementary students whose families opted them out of a controversial sex-education program last year, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The families of an additional 82 children also were notified that their names may have been released, Cherry Hill Public Schools Superintendent Kwame Morton said last week, the Inquirer added.

'A lot of parents are upset. Somebody needs to be held accountable.'

The paper said the elementary students' names were released in September 2023 after an Open Public Records Act request seeking information about how many parents were excluding their children from the state's controversial new standards on sex education, which include information about gender identity, puberty, and masturbation.

The Inquirer said Morton acknowledged the mistake and noted that the names were removed last week from the OPRAmachine, which assists requesters with accessing public records and is where the 2023 request had been filed.

Morton said the names were redacted in the district’s PDF files but showed up when the OPRAmachine converted the files to a different format, the paper reported. The district used an incorrect redaction procedure, which allowed the names to appear despite being blacked out, Charlie Kratovil, an OPRAmachine leader, added to the Inquirer.

Once district lawyers were made aware of the issue, the paper said they sent a letter to the OPRAmachine to get the names removed. Morton told the Inquirer that the district has implemented new security measures, and employees were retrained on confidentiality rules.

“In no way shape or form was the intention to release any names,” Morton told the paper last week. ”The important thing is not ever is it our intention to harm any child.”

Harvey Vazquez — a parent and former school board candidate — submitted an online complaint last month asking the U.S. Department of Education to investigate whether the district violated the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, which protects students’ privacy and education records, the Inquirer said.

More from the paper:

Vazquez, whose 6-year-old son was on the opt-out list, brought up the issue last month at a school board meeting, where Morton says he was first made aware.

Vazquez said the students whose names were made public without parental consent attended Russell Knight, Bret Harte, Richard Stockton, and Thomas Paine elementary schools. A parent notified the district about the release of the names in November 2023, but nothing was done, he said.

Morton confirmed that no action was taken, but said he was not informed about the release at the time.

“A lot of parents are upset,” Vazquez told the Inquirer. “Somebody needs to be held accountable.”

More from the paper:

The unauthorized disclosure came to light during a hotly contested race for three school board seats in Cherry Hill among Vazquez and nine others. Vazquez said he discovered the release after he began investigating the New Jersey Public Education Coalition, which labeled three other candidates in the race as “like-minded.” Vazquez narrowly lost.

The coalition, which touts itself as a nonpartisan group of educators, parents, and other stakeholders, made the OPRA request as part of a statewide project surveying districts. The group wanted to dispute claims that a majority of New Jersey parents had opted out of the new sex-education standards, said its founder Michael Gottesman.

The revised guidelines, which took effect in 2022, prompted an outcry from some parents. The state allowed districts to decide whether to amend their curricula to meet the expectations of what students should learn by the end of second, fifth, eighth, and 12th grade. Parents who believe the instruction conflicts with their moral or religious beliefs may have the student excused from that portion of the course.

Gottesman told the Inquirer that an outside vendor analyzed the coalition’s survey results, and the coalition never saw the students’ names. He added to the paper that he hadn't learned that the names had been disclosed until recently.

“As a coalition, we would never release that type of information,” Gottesman noted to the Inquirer.

Bridget Palmer — one of the newly elected Cherry Hill school board members — told the paper, “There is no arguing that there was a huge mistake made. You can’t undo what has already been done, but we can take steps to make sure it never happens again.”

Vazquez noted to the Inquirer that he wants the district to better explain how the lapse occurred and enact discipline against anyone who was responsible: “There needs to be a public apology. That’s the least they can do.”

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