An Administrator's Guide to California Private School Law

Chapter 14 – Pupil Records

Informal notes should not be shared with anyone except a person substituting for the creator of the note. The reason is that second party review may render the informal note a “pupil record.” For example, internal emails regarding a particular pupil between teachers, teaching assistants or administrators, or between school employees and parents are likely to qualify as pupil records. 2081

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G v. Fay School, Inc. (D. Mass. 2017) 2017 WL 4381668. This case highlights the hazards of creating records, including imprudently worded e-mails, that must later be produced. A student, G, attended the Fay School in Massachusetts for nearly seven years. During his seventh grade, his parents notified the School that they believed that G suffered from symptoms such as headaches, nose bleeds and chest tightness caused by his exposure to the School’s Wi-Fi. His parents claimed that G had a condition known as Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity Syndrome and requested accommodations. The School granted some accommodations, including allowing G to use an Ethernet cable instead of Wi-Fi and providing him an eight-foot space free from sources of radio frequencies. The School denied requests for other accommodations, including that the School reduce its level of radio frequency emissions, require all students in G’s class to use Ethernet cables instead of Wi- Fi, or arrange for G’s classroom be free of Wi-Fi. The family withdrew G and sued the School for various claims, including retaliation. During the discovery process, the School was forced to produce internal emails between School officials that made fun of G’s parents’ concerns about the Wi-Fi. The School filed a motion for summary judgment, which the court denied as to the retaliation claim, relying in part on the family’s claim that these emails were evidence that the School was hostile to their requests for accommodations because the emails made fun of the parents as paranoid.

Schools should remind employees periodically that internal emails can sometimes qualify as pupil records, to which parents are entitled. Even if the emails do not constitute pupil records, they may be discoverable evidence in the event of a claim by a family. School employees should always discuss students and parents in a respectful and professional manner, particularly when in writing, and frustrations or unnecessary commentary should never be memorialized in email. In addition, schools more and more frequently use email correspondence as a method of memorializing key communications, such as memorializing reasonable accommodations that a school grants to a student. Schools should, as a best practice, develop a

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