U.D. schools nix student info from tuition bills list
UPPER DARBY >> The Upper Darby School District will change the way it lists invoices for private school tuition after a district resident raised concerns that current practices discloses a student’s identity.
The district released a statement Thursday saying it will no longer put invoice numbers for those kinds of tuition payments. At present, invoices for some private schools placed on the treasurer’s report of bills to be paid lists either a student’s identification number or their last name fort those attend school including the Aim Academy and the Y.A.L.E School in Philadelphia.
“In the short term, until the district can convince those schools to structure their invoice numbers in different ways, the district will no longer place invoice numbers on the monthly report,” said the district’s statement. “The district is mindful that those reports, with their invoice numbers, are a means that the public may use to confirm that the district is not paying a vendor twice for the same invoice, and that by removing them from the monthly report that will not be possible.
“But in the end, the district felt compelled to take this step in order to protect student privacy.”
Resident and Republican school board candidate Jamie Santora brought the invoices to the school board’s attention at their Oct. 8 meeting. He was concerned that disclosing such identifiable material on the publicly accessible treasurer’s report was violating the student’s privacy seeing that some agreements between the district and parents are confidential.
“Most individuals would not be able to discern the specific subject student from the information in the invoice,” read the district’s statement. “Further, there is no indication in the invoices that describes the school or the reason that the district would pay for a student to attend there.”
According to the district, such descriptive information of the invoice had previously been removed from the list of bills, so the board was surprised to see that it was buried in the sometimes 60-page long report. The minimal information released for private school tuition is part of the board’s balance to, “protect that privacy while at the same time offering transparency in its financial matters.”
The district claims no violations of federal law regarding the protection of a students’ education regards as it relates to the invoice information.
“In the end, the district agrees with the speaker that the invoice numbers should not allow anyone to determine what school any student is attending, and it is taking steps – both in the short term and longer term – to ensure that is not occurring,” read the statement. “But that is because the Upper Darby students deserve that level of privacy, and our standards should be higher than the minimum that federal law requires.”