This is a form that has been on the newsletter for the past 3 years. No one is pressured to buy anything. The form is merely an order form. The program is called SCRIP and is used by many schools and churches (a gift card buying program). The new principal will allow us to distribute the form each week to all parents if we distribute outside the newsletters...so, I doubt she cares about parents' being overly solicited.
She may be sensitive to pressuring ALL your school's families to participate in your fundraiser. Our principal is very protective of our families and is always reminding us that fundraisers are optional and think about how all of our families will react to our requests for money or participation.
Perhaps she sees the teacher's boxes like your own mailbox where "solicitations are not allowed."
JHB. Thanks for the quick response. What we want to put in the newsletter is a form that permits parents to order from a fundraiser. No student information is on the form.
As I think about it, your Principal is probably concerned with FERPA. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is a federal law says that schools cannot release student information without parents/students' permission except for "directory information" which includes:
Student's name
Participation in officially recognized activities and sports
Address
Telephone listing
Weight and height of members of athletic teams
Electronic mail address
Photograph
Degrees, honors, and awards received
Date and place of birth
Major field of study
Dates of attendance
Grade level
The most recent educational agency or institution attended
School districts set disclosure rules based on upon this law and usually indicate that policy in the student handbook or a letter home to parents, also allowing families to request non-disclosure.
School policies on what can/cannot be released about the students may extend into brochures, newsletters, websites, etc. For example, you may include photographs with captions in a school publication. But if that publication is distributed externally or posted on a website, should you really have students' full names on it? A school might have a policy to publish no names (just generic captions) or only first names in that situation.
But once again, it escapes me as to how this might have a bearing on routine PTO stuff you would put in a teacher mailbox.
It might affect what is published in a school/PTO newsletter.
But those decisions are very complex and should be made at the district level. Your principal should be getting her guidance from the professionals who understand how these laws apply.
HIPAA is the United States Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.
Basically it deals with protecting health insurance coverage for people who lose their jobs, standardization of healthcare-related information systems, and security and confidentiality of related information.
It's hard to imagine any way this would stretch to encompass what goes into a teacher's mailbox. In my opinion, the principal is totally off base.
I'd try to find out more. But remember, it does no good to publicly prove her wrong or make her look stupid. Find a diplomatic way to deal with her concerns.
Someone out there please help me. Our new and very young principal (27) thinks that HIPAA and other federal laws preclude the PTO from putting anything in teachers' mailboxes. She also is limiting what we can put in the weekly parent newsletter. Is there a federal law that would prevent us from putting PTO sanctioned information in teachers' mailboxes????
