we need districts to stop giving away their students' FERPA rights

 You may already have heard of Nikki Anderson, the mom in South Carolina whose six-year-old daughter came home from school with an AI-generated photo of the little girl as what she wanted to be when she grew up; it's now been covered in both USA Today and People, though I recommend reading Anderson's own posts over in Instagram. 

In an update today, she notes that the district, in responding to USA Today, speaks of no longer having such assignments and adopting policies and procedures, including one that has an "parental release" for AI (whatever that is), but she can find no such release within the district handbooks.

What is feeling rather deja vu to me about this is the district being able to share student information without the permission of parents is something that was being raised by many of us 13 years ago in connection to InBloom*.  Changes to FERPA during the Obama administration allowed school districts to share information about students to third parties in ways that previously had not been allowed. In 2016, this--along with more straightforward concerns about actual data breaches--were flagged in a petition to then-U.S. Secretary of Education John King:

The petition, sent to U.S. Education Secretary John King, says changes made to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, known as FERPA, over the past several years have allowed education agencies and organizations to share student data with third parties without permission from students or their parents.

Now, of course, districts are signing agreements with all sorts of tech companies all of the time, and, by their very nature, those companies have access to all sorts of data about the students in the district. 

I think it's time to bring back up those concerns about the FERPA changes.**

_______________________________ 

 *alas for links that have since died...

**You know you're getting old when you've been through the whole pendulum swing on something in education...

Possibly too many things to read on AI and tech in schools

 

It's a lovely time of year in Massachusetts. 
Do get out and enjoy it.
My photo of a former schoolhouse in Belchertown yesterday.

The tabs I have open: 

What I have been reading this weekend

• This is from earlier in the month, but Wired covered how AI slop is now facing a backlash.
  

  The backlash’s “why” is simple at its core. Many Americans feel like they never consented to any of this. I had no idea that my online interactions would one day be scraped en masse for AI model training. I didn’t ask for Instagram to enable deepfakes on my account. I didn’t want Google to push AI-generated answers at the top of search results. I woke up one day, and generative AI features were stuffed into every corner of all the software I rely on without my consent.

  
  
  
• The one group that is acutely aware of how much public education spends is the industries concentrating on selling schools things, and technology is one of the two big pushes on that front right now. The New York Times has a piece on exactly that sales relationship. It is an excerpt from Coding Kids: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools by Natasha Singer, which is coming out in September.
  
  
• The other industry clamoring for education money is the security industry, and Slate has a bleak look at that, which makes this very good point: 
  

  When Gaggle quarantines a draft, when Securly assigns a kid a rolling “wellness level,” when a detection system decides the shape in a student’s hand is a gun, the software is filing a report about a young person’s intentions. And it arrives first. It shows up carrying the authority of a system that cost the district millions and speaks in the grammar of objectivity, and it lands in front of an administrator or a school cop before the kid has said a word. The student’s account comes second, when it’s generally too late.

  Hard to "believe kids" when they're always the ones responding to something that has already been invested, literally, which such authority.
  
  

•  Florida's voucher program and so-called parents' rights push has just run headlong into 2000 years of hierarchy, with the Florida Attorney General receiving, upon his push to force Catholic schools that are receiving vouchers to allow students to attend even if they are not vaccinated, a tour de force letter from the Roman Catholic bishops of Florida, which I really recommend you read.
  

  Respectfully, any insinuation that a government official can dictate to the Catholic Church (or any religion) how to apply her tenets and dogma, violates well-established constitutional religious freedom rights. It is beyond cavil that the bishops, not the state, decide how to interpret and apply Catholic principles and theology.   

  I'll note that the letter does a nice job of laying out why one might required universal vaccination, by the way, something which I'd appreciate more of our Massachusetts politicians reading.  

• Steve Revilak has been posting highlights from the Arlington, MA archives via his Bluesky account, and I very much appreciated, as a child of the 70's, this one from 1971 about the latest menace on the street of Arlington: BIG WHEELS!
  

  

  
  
  

Ludlow case leaves in place First Circuit ruling for the district

Screenshot of Monday's orders, highlighting the relevant line
Yes, that is all that they send out!

Unless you were watching for it, you may have missed it, but on Monday, the Supreme Court denied the writ of certiorari (or "denied cert") in the Foote v. Ludlow case. That means the First Circuit decision from last February, which found in favor of the district, which I noted here, stays in place.

To quote again what I quoted from that then: 

As  this  opinion  has endeavored to illuminate,  we acknowledge the fundamental importance of the rights asserted by the Parents to be informed of, and to direct, significant aspects of their child's life--including their socialization, education, and health.  Be that as it may--as this opinion has also made effort to explicate --parental rights are not unlimited.  Parents may  not  invoke  the  Due  Process  Clause  to  create  a  preferred educational experience for their child in public school.  As per our  understanding  of  Supreme  Court  precedent,  our  pluralistic society assigns those curricular and administrative decisions to the expertise of school officials, charged with the responsibility of educating children. And the Protocol of nondisclosure as to a student's at-school  gender expression without  the  student's consent does not restrict parental rights in a way courts have recognized  as  a  violation  of  the  guarantees  of  substantive  due process. All told, the Parents have failed to state a claim that Ludlow's  Protocol  as  applied  to  their  family  violated  their constitutional right to direct the upbringing of their child.

GLAD Law, which filed a friend-of-court brief, noted the decision here. Note that among the other briefs filed was one from the Massachusetts Attorney General, along with 15 others.

No, I don't know how this aligns with the recent shadow docket decision from California, save maybe it wasn't a state law, but I don't know that we should be looking for consistency among the majority. 
UPDATE: Looks like I'm not alone in being confused.

 

good Globe follow-up on the House social media bill

I'm impressed by the follow-up article from the Boston Globe on the House's disaster of a bill passed last week.*

Civil liberties groups and organizations in favor of tech privacy — including some that are backing the bills — warn the proposals could backfire and make online activity even less private by requiring users to submit personal information to verify their ages or parental status.

Some restrictions, experts argue, would also face First Amendment challenges by limiting young people’s speech and vulnerable groups’ abilities to find community online. 

They also note that this means we're not fulfilling our responsibility to students:

 “Children need to learn how to use social media so they aren’t using it irresponsibly, and we need to learn how to use our phones,” said Max Nash, a junior at Mashpee High School who formed the Coalition for Student Mental Health to lobby for alternative tech policies. “But that requires education and not a ban.”

I appreciate Rep. Gordon in general, but this is such an odd thing to own up to: 

Representative Kenneth Gordon, who chairs the education committee, said lawmakers shaped the bill to closely follow a similar law in Florida, whose under-14 social media ban has faced court challenges for two years. 

Florida + court challenges seemed like a good path to follow?

And all of this here:

 Both the Healey and House proposals would require age verification measures that civil liberties groups and privacy experts say are excessive. All users — not just minors — could be required to give tech companies more personal information, such as photos of government IDs, to prove their age, they warned.

Healey’s proposal, for instance, would require social media companies to provide a host of age-specific data that could require checking users’ ages.

People who don’t have such IDs, or might be hesitant to provide them, could then be unable to access a wide range of online content. The bill includes a broad definition of social media sites, including nearly any platform with personal accounts and user-generated content, which opponents argue could encompass sites such as the popular information forum Wikipedia.

That ID hurdle has formed the basis of First Amendment challenges in many states, according to Paul Taske, co-director of the NetChoice Litigation Center, a tech industry-funded group that has successfully sued to have the law set aside in several cases.

“Ultimately, the laws suffer from the same core constitutional infirmity: They block or restrict access for users, particularly minors, but also adults when it comes to speech that is lawful for everyone,” Taske said.

Cybersecurity experts warn that children could bypass the checks, and hackers could seek to steal data collected. Parental consent requirements could present further security issues, with little way for parents to reliably prove their relation to a user, opening the door for nefarious actors who abuse online reporting systems.

More than 400 cybersecurity experts, including from MIT, Tufts University, and Boston University, issued a public letter last month calling for a moratorium on online age verification laws they said “might cause more harm than good.”

“This policy will inevitably massively reduce privacy online by forcing users to reveal more information to service providers than they do nowadays,” the group wrote.

The age verification measures could also run counter to the goals of a separate date privacy bill the state Senate passed last fall and is backed by the ACLU of Massachusetts and other groups. That legislation would allow companies to collect only “reasonably necessary” personal data and permit consumers to opt out of data collection. Companies would also be barred from selling children’s data.

Plus, of course, there are those who have positive uses for social media that would be barred by this bill: 

Advocacy organizations also raised concerns about other First Amendment violations, including for users who might face the most repercussions from verification measures and social media restrictions.

Such a law, some argue, could limit teenagers’ abilities to organize political activity, hear the latest news, express themselves creatively, or find community online.

Teddy Walker, a 21-year-old Bostonian who is trans and a leader of a group organized to protect trans rights, said he was isolated and depressed as a teenager until he found solace in Instagram and YouTube trans communities.

“It really helped give me the language and understanding for who I am,” Walker said. The proposed parental restrictions could “lead to trans youth and trans kids being less safe, being less able to access that content online that was so life-saving and life-affirming for me.”

Sing it with Noah Kahan, all: 

you're a mess, you're a mess, good God, you're a mess!

__________________________________________________________________

*And how often do I say that? 

More to read on the Mahmoud decision

•  I've subscribed to Chris Geidner at Law Dork, and I highly recommend him in general. Here's what he has on the Mahmoud decision. He starts by noting the inconsistency when it comes to the rights of parents:
  
  

  If the justices so concerned about parental rights on Friday meant that, they would have, one would think, taken a question relating to a similar issue — or, at least, sent it back to the Sixth Circuit to be reconsidered in light of Skrmetti and Mahmoud. 

  But that is not the message the court wanted to send on Monday. In four other cases relating to trans people’s lives, the court did send the cases back to be reconsidered in light of Skrmetti. All of those cases were cases in which the plaintiffs challenging anti-trans policies won in the appeals court, so it was the government defending those policies and asking the Supreme Court to take up the cases. 

  In all four cases — two involving Medicaid exclusions for gender-affirming medical care, one involving public teachers health insurance plans, and one involving birth certificate policies — the Supreme Court granted certiorari, vacated the appeals court decision below, and remanded “for further consideration in light of” Skrmetti. In other words, the Fourth Circuit, Ninth Circuit, and Tenth Circuit are to re-examine these cases given Skrmetti. 

  But, in the two cases where the states defending their anti-trans policies won below, the court let those stand — even though the plaintiffs had raised a question unresolved by Skrmetti.

  
  
  
• Elie Mystal writing in The Nation nails what the overwhelming theme is of Alito's majority decision. 
  

  The astute reader will note that I haven’t talked about the law in this case, but that’s because Alito doesn’t really talk about the law either. Alito offers no coherent reasoning for why these books violate the First Amendment rights of the bigoted parents, while others do not. His argument requires you to accept the premise that being gay or trans is facially immoral, and the objection of religious parents is obvious. If you do not accept those anachronistic premises, what logic there is in his opinion completely falls apart. Under Alito’s logic, any parent of any religion can object to any book for any reason.

celebrate the wins

 And there was one this week in the First Circuit Court of Appeals, where the decision went for the Ludlow School Committee in Foote v. Ludlow School Committee:

As  this  opinion  has endeavored to illuminate,  we acknowledge the fundamental importance of the rights asserted by the Parents to be informed of, and to direct, significant aspects of their child's life--including their socialization, education, and health.  Be that as it may--as this opinion has also made effort to explicate --parental rights are not unlimited.  Parents may  not  invoke  the  Due  Process  Clause  to  create  a  preferred educational experience for their child in public school.  As per our  understanding  of  Supreme  Court  precedent,  our  pluralistic society assigns those curricular and administrative decisions to the expertise of school officials, charged with the responsibility of educating children. And the Protocol of nondisclosure as to a student's at-school  gender expression without  the  student's consent does not restrict parental rights in a way courts have recognized  as  a  violation  of  the  guarantees  of  substantive  due process. All told, the Parents have failed to state a claim that Ludlow's  Protocol  as  applied  to  their  family  violated  their constitutional right to direct the upbringing of their child.

Coverage from EdWeek is here. 

Screaming into the void on IA

 

Headline in "The Hill": AI read to hit its stride in schools in 2025
No, I am not linking to the article.

Sometimes it is a consolation rather than a problem that education tends to operate as a pendulum. Anyone around schools for any length of time knows that much that comes into schools being trumpeted as the next big thing goes away. 

Something that you may have missed is the judge in the Hingham High AI-cheating case denied the plaintiff's motion for a preliminary injunction in a decision you can read here or can read Benjamin Riley having some fun with here. A preliminary injunction--my I am not a lawyer explanation!--is based on the likelihood of the judge deciding the case in that side's favor, and in this case, the judge's answer was "not at all likely." As the decision says:

Despite Plaintiffs’ strenuous efforts to frame this case as one of “first impression in the Commonwealth” about how to deal with an emerging technology, Court need not parse the terms of the Handbook as if it were a criminal statute27 to decide whether Grammarly can reasonably be considered an “author” as the term is used in the Handbook. The Supreme Court has expressly eschewed such an approach. See Bethel Sch. Dist. No. 403, 478 U.S. at 686 (“Given the school’s need to be able to impose disciplinary sanctions for a wide range of unanticipated conduct disruptive of the educational process, the school disciplinary rules need not be as detailed as a criminal code which imposes criminal sanctions.”).  

In any event, the Handbook defines plagiarism as “the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own work.” Docket No. 24-1, at 25. Even if I were to credit RNH’s testimony that he was “confused” about what uses of AI were permitted, it strains credulity to suppose that RNH actually believed that copying and pasting, without attribution, text that had been generated by Grammarly was consistent with any standard of academic honesty.  

I'll only add: no appropriate attribution is possible, as the actual sources of such generated text are unknowable.  

It's a useful decision to read.

_______________________________________________
While I'd known of the courts' general reluctance to look over the shoulders of school officials (within bounds), I'd not previously read either of the closing citations:

As the Supreme Court has noted:  

    It is not the role of the federal courts to set aside decisions of school administrators which the court may view as lacking a basis in wisdom or compassion. Public high school students do have substantive and procedural rights while at school. But § 1983 does not extend the right to relitigate in federal court evidentiary questions arising in school disciplinary proceedings or the proper construction of school regulations. The system of public education that has evolved in this Nation relies necessarily upon the discretion and judgment of school administrators and school board members and § 1983 was not intended to be a vehicle for federal court correction of errors in the exercise of that discretion which do not rise to the level of violations of specific constitutional guarantees. 

Wood v. Strickland, 420 U.S. 308, 326 (1975) (citations omitted). 

In sum, “the Nation’s youth is primarily the responsibility of parents, teachers, and state and local school officials, and not of federal judges.” Hazelwood Sch. Dist. v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260, 273 (1988). This case well illustrates the good sense in that division of labor.

Some things to read from across the country

 It's a whole big country out there, and, even though it is summer, there is stuff happening around schools:

• People in Worcester may or may not remember this--I believe it was in the fogginess of everything being remote, meetings happening seemingly multiple times a week, and state guidance changing nearly as fast--but there was an effort at one point to implement a surveillance of students' online activity under the guise of mental health. This was (appropriately!) brought to the School Committee, that weighed in against it.
  If you're wondering what that then would have looked like, please read this piece from May McCoy in the Kansas Reflector about what it's like to be a student at Lawrence High School in Kansas:
  

  It would be easy to describe what’s happening to students at Lawrence High School as Orwellian, but that would be an easy and not exactly fitting metaphor. It does resemble in general the dystopian novels we used to be assigned to read in high school — “1984” and “Brave New World” — but a more accurate comparison is to a science fiction novella you may have never heard of.

  In Philip K. Dick’s “The Minority Report,” published in 1956 and made into a movie by Steven Spielberg in 2002, a predictive policing system is used to arrest people before they have the chance to commit the crime they are expected to. Dick’s story — like the use of Gaggle — pits authoritarianism and conformity against creativity and individual liberty.

  Read it, because the sales pitch here to school officials is how "safe" it will make their students, while, of course, doing no such thing. Watch for this one.  

• Even though Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters issued a "mandate" that every public school in Oklahoma would teach the Bible, a growing number of them are saying that they aren't going to do that, leading to this great column by Clay Horning, asking what Walters really wants, and what he's actually getting: 
  

  ...making Walters looks even smaller, dumber, simpler and more ridiculous than he previously appeared, which is hard to do.

   Go, Oklahoma districts! 
  

• The New York Times Sunday Magazine covered the push to deny undocumented students or even the children of undocumented immigrants an education. 
  This is of course not only dumb--it poorly serves the country not to educate children who are here--but would reverse current regulation and policy.
  That's a gift link. Please read it and share it. 

You need to know about Project 2025

 I am hoping that by now you've heard of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's "Presidential Transition Project," which not only involves a whole lot of familiar faces from the previous administration, but also has significant overlap with the now-adopted Republican party platform, which, as Kevin Kruse notes, isn't itself much of a platform. 

This includes in education as Chalkbeat outlines, where the periodic calls for elimination of the federal Department of Education--Trump, for example, promised it in 2016--are renewed.

A few interrelated articles from across the country on school boards

First up, Governing looks at the culture warrior aspect of school board elections and looks into if that is waning:

There will be other issues that polarize future school board candidates as these shifts ebb and flow according to what’s been successful and what’s failed in capturing voters’ attention. That cycle of controversy is yet another reason why it’s too soon to call these elections results a permanent blow to extreme partisanship in school board elections. Complacency and a sense of too-early satisfaction around some wins in school board elections nationwide can’t help protect students and teachers’ rights.

NSBA '19: Political officials and social media

This presentation is by Linda M. Trujillo of Walsh Gallegos Treviño Russo & Kyle P.C. and Kate I. Noble, Sante Fe Public Schools Board president. This is something I've been watching as there have been rulings in other parts of the country around the rights of the public to public officials' social media postings and to being able to interact with them thereon.

"three cases that will give you no sense of stability"
"I may even be able to confuse you even more"

Looking back on Tinker's anniversay

Des Moines Public Schools Twitter wins today:

Happy Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District Golden Anniversary Day!

Honestly, a good thing we lost this case 50 years ago. pic.twitter.com/w35jE5qh5A

— DM Public Schools (@DMschools) February 24, 2019

Not familiar with Tinker v Des Moines Independent Community School District? Read about it here.

Jill Lepore writes about Plyler v Doe in the New Yorker

There's a thoughtful piece from Jill Lepore in the New Yorker magazine on the Plyler v Doe decision, affirming the right of undocumented immigrants to an education. It considers the wider implications of it, as well as what it might mean for a court that includes Brett Kavanaugh.

Massachusetts Council of School Attorneys 2017 Annual Meeting

First up: Rhoda Schneider from DESE
"change is constant in this field...there's a reason we went into public education, or for many of us, school law...there are changes in education and in law every day...that keeps our practice dynamic"

New bilingual law: LOOK act
to design and tailor work with English learners
there will be guidelines and regulations: rolling out over the course of the next six months or so
"every reason to hope this law will be a benefit"

November Board of Ed: standards updates

History and social studies
ELA and math implementation
also coming: arts and health

Wulfson: update on review of history and social sciences curriculum framework
getting field involved "has been very much a part of this process"
"this team has really provided for a lot of public input"

Peske: appreciate educators who have served with us; panel review process
what is a standard? What a student should do and be able to do, and should be measureable
curriculum? content standards and other materials to support instruction

what teachers should teach and students should learn

Buchanan: multiphase process
public survey, "one of the strongest responses we've seen...there's a lot of interest in this"
convene review panel: six meetings
drafting and reviewing proposed revisions
plan is to present draft of revision to Board to vote to invite public comment in January
Board to vote new standards in June

Priorities were to emphasize civics education and to deepen understanding
improve also rigor, clarity, and coherence
"major concern by demographic group" and engagement

New full year civics course proposed for grade 8: "centerpiece around which we drew a through line"
civics standards integrated into every grade
"middle school is a place where the first really deep look" into our system of government happens
revised U.S. Gov and Politics standards for grade 12
emphasis in supporting sections: introduction: "A Renewed Mission: Education for Civic Life in a Democracy"
guiding principles: studying current events, data analysis, media literacy skills
history and social science practice, prek-12
research, process, analysis, evaluation of credibility of sources
sample guiding and supporting questions

Grade 8 to include: philosophical foundations of US political system; institutions of US government; rights & responsibilities of citizens; Constitution, amendments, SCOTUS decisions; state and local government

"8th grade seen as a launch pad for the work they'll do in US History in high school"

Q from Fernandez on integration of social emotional learning
A from Susan Wheltle of the guiding principles, also overlap in curriculum with early grades in what is required
in older grades shifts into how institutions are formed
democracy in the classroom: "every day democracy...then democracy within every larger groups of society"
comes with discussion of how we're always wrestling with interpretations of history
Buchanan: having students do more independent research
students be reviewing primary source documents
"investigating these questions actively"
"What historical interpretation involves"

(this in response to Moriarty) grade 12 course designed to be leading students to what they'll be doing in college
research, digging into practices, what they're learning on the national stage can be applied locally
maintaining content from 2003 framework in revised document

Peyser: "it's more like a Rubik's Cube than a stone in a pond" to revise the standards while retaining the core of 2003 standards
"we obviously haven't seen it all yet, so let's not get ahead of ourselves"

Sagan: what are your thoughts on what we'll measure?
"I am reluctant to talk more assessments"
Wulfson: we know there's a question of assessment before us; we've just started to do some thinking on what a history and social science assessment would look like
chance to integrate some new models, perhaps some project based
Sagan: don't want to do it serially
Wulfson: hope to have some resources in FY19 to flesh that out

McKenna; applaud all of you getting to this point
all students will have civics
having it integrated, students with more resources would get it and others would not

Sagan: have draft education from Legislature, which is unusual
Wulfson: at this point, have not filed a formal bill
some things that would be helpful for us, some things that we suggest might be a pilot
"we are providing..."
Sagan: "but they wrote to us, not to you, so we as a Board need to respond"
McKenna: suggest sending them the draft standards in January
"I think the nervousness has been that DESE won't move this ahead"
Sagan will respond with plan and schedule

arts and health standards haven't been revised since 1999
arts: group to be created in January; back to Board with final revision by spring 2019
health a few months behind that

and adjourned! 

It's a good time to review "Barnette"

Specifically, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, decided by the Supreme Court in 1943:

The Fourteenth Amendment, as now applied to the States, protects the citizen against the State itself and all of its creatures -- Boards of Education not excepted. These have, of course, important, delicate, and highly discretionary functions, but none that they may not perform within the limits of the Bill of Rights. That they are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes. 

Such Boards are numerous, and their territorial jurisdiction often small. But small and local authority may feel less sense of responsibility to the Constitution, and agencies of publicity may be less vigilant in calling it to account. The action of Congress in making flag observance voluntary and respecting the conscience of the objector in a matter so vital as raising the Army contrasts sharply with these local regulations in matters relatively trivial to the welfare of the nation. There are village tyrants, as well as village Hampdens, but none who acts under color of law is beyond reach of the Constitution... 

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.

We think the action of the local authorities in compelling the flag salute and pledge transcends constitutional limitations on their power, and invades the sphere of intellect and spirit which it is the purpose of the First Amendment to our Constitution to reserve from all official control.

Among the rights students retain at the public schoolhouse door is that of refraining from pledging allegiance to the flag.

Worcester School Committee: public petition on student arrests

The petition is here. 
Gordon Davis speaking:
have lived in Worcester for 47, 48 years now, kids went to Worcester Public Schools
petition that a policy be set by this school committee set today or in the very near future that no student be arrested

U.S. Department of Justice weighs in on school resource officers

If school personnel can handle it, they shouldn't be involved:

The Justice Department's interest statement, which was filed Oct. 2, says that the lawsuit "implicates the rights of children in schools to be free from unconstitutional police seizures, the rights of children with disabilities to be free from disability-based discrimination, and the rights of children to be free from civil rights violations that lead to the cycle of harsh school discipline and law enforcement involvement known as the school-to-prison pipeline."

This is in response to a lawsuit filed on behalf of two Kentucky elementary schoolchildren who were handcuffed by a school resource officer.

LGBTQ safe and supportive learning environments

Chester: have modified self-identify sections
sure that recommendations are consistent with law, which added general identity as protected class
Roach: can think of no area in which the Department's leadership has been more important for tolerance in disposition
have come a long, long way
Willyard: work that has been done, "one step closer to every student being able to leaving their house every day with a smile on their face, not having to worry about being tormented because of whom they like"
passes unanimously