JO - Student Records

STUDENT RECORDS

School District personnel shall develop and maintain only those records necessary for the educational welfare of pupils, for the orderly and efficient operation of the school, and for the attendance and other information as may be required by law or State Board of Education regulation.

School Committees, by law, have the responsibility to provide optimal educational opportunities for pupils under their jurisdiction.  This responsibility is delegated to the Superintendent/Principal and all professional school district personnel.  These employees, collectively and individually, have the obligation to provide a system of school operation that best serves the needs of the pupils enrolled.  This requires an efficient system of pupil personnel records and professional records pertaining to pupils.

Information placed in pupil records should be limited to those items necessary to fulfill the purposes of pupil personnel records as stated above.  To solicit unnecessary information is to invade the privacy of pupils and/or parents.  To require or to permit professional staff members to place unnecessary information in pupil records is to maintain an inefficient system.

The criterion to be used in the accumulation and preservation of information in any pupil record is relevance.  Pupils must be protected against any kind of evaluation based on incomplete, inaccurate, or obsolete information.

The objectives of school district personnel who collect and use information about pupils are to prevent unnecessary intrusions into privacy, to provide means to verify the accuracy of record content, and to discard periodically obsolete information.

A cumulative record shall be maintained for each student.  This record shall contain only verified information of recognized importance and may be used only to make educational decisions about the student.  It shall be directly accessible only to the professional staff, the student and his/her parents or guardian.  Any other records shall be temporary in nature, separate from the cumulative file, and shall be destroyed when their usefulness is no longer apparent or when the student leaves the school.

Students 18 or older or parents of children younger than 18 have the right to challenge the contents of school records if they believe the records are inaccurate, misleading, or in any way violate the student’s rights according to FERPA.

Legal Reference: Title 20A MRSA Sec. 6001

Adopted:   Prior to 1988

Revised:   January 13, 2022   

                  Acton School Department