Is a professor allowed to access my grade from a previous class not taught by them? This question is prompted by a similar question on academia.StackExchange: Is a professor allowed to ask me what grade I got in a previous class? This is in the U.S. Obviously, FERPA was brought up. Comments and explanations in answers talked about what it means to have a &quot;legitimate educational interest&quot; in a student's grades. This question posed to law.StackExchange is about what constitutes &quot;legitimate educational interest&quot;? Generally, schools must have written permission from the parent or eligible student in order to release any information from a student's education record. However, FERPA allows schools to disclose those records, without consent, to the following parties or under the following conditions (34 CFR § 99.31): School officials with legitimate educational interest; The majority opinion on Academia seems to be that a teacher wanting to know their student's pervious grades in a different class - a class which was a prerequisite for the current class - is a legitimate educational interest. The only reason provided as for why is that the teacher can use it to deny access to the class to some students or to adjust the class speed and/or content to better accommodate the students' level of understanding. I suggested that teachers can get this information in other, better ways, and have no true need or interest in previous grades. For example, when I want to get a feel for the level of the class up front, I have given an anonymous quiz on the first day of class. Since it's anonymous, it is obviously not graded. Others still insist that teachers in this situation have a legitimate educational interest in the student grades. One person went so far as to suggest that FERPA only denies the teacher in cases of idle curiosity. That seems wholly ineffective to me at that point, as any teacher could always get out of a reprimand by claiming &quot;I heard this student was concerned about their standing and I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help.&quot; You cannot easily prove that a teacher had only idle curiosity. So the question is, in a nutshell: Legally, what has FERPA's &quot;legitimate educational interest&quot; been interpreted as meaning, strictly? If this has ever been tested in court for any grey areas like this (ie: not cases of negligence or idle curiosity), that would be great. My personal interest in this is to get a better idea of when FERPA denies access to student records and when it does not. I am concerned, as the interpretation of some people of &quot;legitimate educational interest&quot; makes me wonder if FERPA does not really protect our privacy in practice, since negligence and idle curiosity should already have been grounds for workplace discipline for school officials in any competent school.
The exact text of 34 CFR § 99.31 makes it clear that the determination of who has &quot;legitimate educational interest&quot; is left up to each educational institution to establish: (a) An educational agency or institution may disclose personally identifiable information from an education record of a student without the consent required by § 99.30 if the disclosure meets one or more of the following conditions: (1) (i) (A) The disclosure is to other school officials, including teachers, within the agency or institution whom the agency or institution has determined to have legitimate educational interests. Moreover, 34 CFR § 99.7 requires each institution to notify students of their particular definition of &quot;legitimate educational interest&quot;: (a) (1) Each educational agency or institution shall annually notify parents of students currently in attendance, or eligible students currently in attendance, of their rights under the Act and this part. ... (3) The notice must include all of the following: ... (iii) If the educational agency or institution has a policy of disclosing education records under § 99.31(a)(1), a specification of criteria for determining who constitutes a school official and what constitutes a legitimate educational interest. (bolding mine) As far as whether this has ever been tested at law, I'm not sure. There are a few cases mentioned in this legal review article from 2003, though the author calls the existing case law at the time &quot;meager&quot;: Not surprisingly, schools' interpretations of the legitimate educational interests exception have been at issue in some FERPA controversies. In Krebs v. Rutgers, for example, a university attempted to characterize its disclosure of students' Social Security numbers to campus post office personnel as a &quot;legitimate educational interest.&quot; The United States District Court for the District of New Jersey enjoined the practice, noting that &quot;the regulations do not suggest, and it is far from clear, that distribution of social security numbers ... serves a 'legitimate educational interest.' &quot; In contrast, in Achman v. Chicago Lakes Independent School District No. 2144, a Minnesota federal district court held that the supervisor of the school's detention room had a legitimate educational interest in accessing the disciplinary records of a student she monitored. In another FERPA case from 1987, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals found that a school official who requested students' education records to defend against her pending criminal charges did not have a legitimate educational interest in the records.&quot; Finally, in another instance that some commentators have deemed &quot;an egregious example of when disclosure serves no legitimate educational interest,&quot; a substitute teacher told her class that a student had HIV and classmates should not share lip balm with him. Earlier in the article, the author makes basically the same point you make in your question: Thus, if a professor, campus employer, or other school official can contrive a colorable &quot;legitimate educational interest&quot; for accessing a student's education records, the official may obtain the data without the student's knowledge or consent. ... Because policies are not uniform, systems administrators are largely untrained, and schools are not held accountable, school discretion in defining legitimate educational interests may undermine student privacy.
Expunction may be possible for instance if you are acquitted, later proven innocent, pardoned, and various other things that fall short of being convicted and doing the time. The entire law is here (Texas code of criminal procedure 55.01). There is also the option of an order of non-disclosure, overviewed here. A requirement for such an order is that you were placed on and completed deferred adjudication community supervision, which from what I can tell is not what happened. "Background check removal" may range between simply taking your money and doing nothing, to doing what you could do yourself to get free of traces via radaris, intelius, spokeo, and so on to "request removal" from that web site. This will not make your record unavailable, because these websites don't have any special powers to reach into and manipulate state records.
For the record, the requirement says: The board of education or trustees of the school district or the state agency responsible for providing education to students with disabilities shall have the burden of proof, including the burden of persuasion and burden of production, in any such impartial hearing, except that a parent or person in parental relation seeking tuition reimbursement for a unilateral parental placement shall have the burden of persuasion and burden of production on the appropriateness of such placement. To understand "burden of proof", think in terms of what claim is being made, by whom: this is different from understanding what you want to happen. To get the outcome you want, you have to make the right claims. Assume that the law requires the school to accommodate a student's learning disability, then the plaintiff (parent) would claim that the school failed to accommodate. The school would then be required to prove that they did accommodate. In other words, all you have to do (initially) is allege a failure to follow the law, and it is up to the school to provide the evidence that your allegation is incorrect (by providing records, also indicating standards that students are held to; the presumption that the panel is supposed to adopt is that the plaintiff's allegation is true, unless facts are introduced that show that it is false). It's not clear what action of the school is alleged to be at variance with the law. It sounds like a simple correctable bureaucratic error, so a hearing should not be necessary, but that doesn't mean that one isn't (e.g. if they have a policy of not admitting to making mistakes).
Whether published or unpublished, they are still protected by copyright. (They are probably unpublished for copyright purposes, but in the US this makes little difference for any recently created work (that is anything after 2002). For older work see the Cornell chart.) They cannot be copied or distributed without permission, unless an exception to copyright, such as fair use or fair dealing applies. And it is hard to see how either would apply to entire essays simply begin placed in a database. Placing text in a database is probably making a copy, and might be distributing it or publishing it, depending on how access to the DB is granted. Now data from the essays, as opposed to the texts of the essays themselves, are probably facts. Facts are not protected by copyright in any Berne Convention country, including the US, the UK, and the EU.
There is no nationwide prohibition on physical contact between teachers and children. But there are positive duties for child safeguarding which might result in a local policy that is more restrictive. The exact legal background is different depending on whether this is happening in England, Scotland, etc., or on whether it's a state or private school, but the net result is the same. For music tuition which takes place outside school, bodies such as the Independent Society of Musicians (the UK's main professional association for musicians and music teachers) will have their own policies for members. For example, for state schools in England, the governors must &quot;make arrangements for ensuring that their functions relating to the conduct of the school are exercised with a view to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children who are pupils at the school&quot; (Education Act 2002 s.175(2)). This is a bit of a mouthful, but the rough idea is that the school has to implement certain policies in the interests of the child, including protecting them from sexual abuse and grooming. The school has to take account of statutory guidance from the Department for Education. In addition, there are standards for teachers' conduct which are used to assess their performance, and include language around safeguarding duties as well as &quot;proper and professional regard for the ethos, policies and practices of the school in which they teach&quot;. Now, there is nothing here to say that a teacher can never make physical contact with a pupil. There are rules about how allegations of abuse are meant to be handled, as well as the general employment law around unfair dismissal, which would mean that accidentally touching a child ought not to result in immediate sacking. A particular school could decide that on balance, the appropriate policy is one of no physical contact at all, or they could be more nuanced (which is likely). Whatever policy they do have must be communicated to the teaching staff, who naturally are meant to follow it - although again, there are requirements of fairness on the employer as to how they handle noncompliance. Given that overall framework, scenarios of accidental touching, or administering first aid, or breaking up a dangerous situation, are different from physical contact as part of normal instruction. Even a local policy which ostensibly says &quot;no touching ever&quot; would have to give way to the Education and Inspections Act 2006, s.93 which specifically authorises our hypothetical teacher at an English state school to use reasonable force to stop a pupil injuring someone else, among other examples. That is also in line with the teachers' duty of care towards the wellbeing of their pupils. These examples are not really the same as what is happening in an ordinary music lesson. Meanwhile, outside the school gates, the Independent Society of Musicans has its own Code of Conduct which includes specific rules about touching in Annex 2, paragraph 20. Physical contact between teachers and pupils is only appropriate in very limited circumstances. Teachers should consider using other strategies such as demonstrating for the student to copy or using a mirror. If a teacher intends to use any physical contact in their teaching, they should state this in writing before lessons begin and ask the parent or guardian to sign that they have read the document. Explain the type of touch involved, where on the body and why, and make sure the pupil is aware of the reason for physical contact. Explain this orally to parents, guardians and pupils, and keep them informed of any need to modify the type of touch required as pupils progress. It is not advisable to touch a child on the trunk of the body unless there is a justifiable reason (e.g. to administer first aid). It is not appropriate to touch a child around the chest, waist, diaphragm or ribs in order to teach breathing. These rules are also made in the context of safeguarding, with the threat of terminating ISM membership (at least in principle). Note that this does not say that touch is disallowed, but does ask it to be limited and respectful, and clearly signalled to the child and their parents or guardians. Other professional societies may well have their own rules. All of this is happening at the level of law and policy, and so it's a little removed from the highly emotive social question of what sorts of behaviour are considered acceptable. Someone who teaches music in the UK would be exposed to a range of strongly-held views on the topic, which don't necessarily relate very clearly to the legal minimum requirements.
The data you cite as PII are simply facts that are public information; your name, photo, your school, track meets, race times, track records, and you have little recourse against the publishing and dissemination of public information, either on a site like Athletic.net that collects and scrapes public information, or against the original sources, such as news outlets and school officials. Collecting and publishing public information is clearly allowed under press freedoms and the 1st Amendment. And, concerning photos: news outlets have the clear right to photograph people in public spaces and identify them. A possible exception regarding athletic.net is the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule ("COPPA") for children under the age of 13. But they cover that in their Privacy Policy and offer a removal policy. One other possible exception is FERPA, the federal student record law, as pointed out by user6726 in their answer; see eCFR — Code of Federal Regulations. But your parents may have signed a release to allow the information to be made public. In the event neither of those exceptions is the remedy, you would need a court order to force Athletic.net to remove information, and you would need to show very compelling evidence that such data is harmful to you in order for the court to risk violating the First Amendment. Also see Cyberstalking and RateMyProfessors.com
No. You are a "person of interest" in a criminal investigation based upon a bona fide reasonable suspicion, even though they lack probable cause, and the government has not threatened to say anything that isn't true, so you have no cause of action against the government. You might have a claim against the school or your employer for wrongfully firing you (being a person of interest in an investigation isn't itself unlawful or even a meaningful mark of bad character), but you are probably an "employee at will" and thus may have no recourse against the employer other than to apply for unemployment benefits because you were fired without good cause. Your recourse against the school would depend upon the nature of that relationship.
Without commenting on the relatively strange situation itself, it is still useful to actually read what was actually said than what was described in a letter from a third person, even if the relayed information is technically true. The supposed basis for the claim of a zero salary is from an email allegedly sent by the department head (appendix 15): In short, you are not teaching in 2022/2023 and you have not submitted the required outline of your research or other engagement. I am very sorry that we cannot establish that you will be doing any work expected of a faculty member. Thus we cannot pay you. Starting with the Fall semester, your pay will be reduced to zero and you will be placed on unpaid personal leave. Essentially, the professor is being put on an unpaid leave because allegedly he is not doing any work. Consequently, minimum wage laws are not engaged even if the professor is not exempt as teachers since he is not being required to do any work. In the U.S., employers generally can do this (unless a work contract provides otherwise); in many circumstances, it is called being laid off (though the term has attracted a permanent connotation in parts of North America) or being suspended. An indefinite unpaid leave can be considered constructive dismissal if the employer does not reasonably allow the employee to return to work. It may not be constructive dismissal if the unpaid leave is prescribed by binding employer policies or because the employee refuses to work (and the employer allows the employment relationship to continue). Even if it is constructive dismissal, it is not automatically wrongful.