Little Parent Input On Data Bill

It has come to our attention that Superintendent Luna is telling parents that I spent many hours in Senator Goedde’s office crafting the new data bill.  Therefore parents should be secure in knowing their student’s data is safe.  This is just not accurate

Stacey Knudsen and myself were invited to a meeting in Senator Goedde’s office to discuss a bill that we wanted introduced.  It was water tight and would have not allowed the release of any personally identifiable information.   Originally it had been written by Jane Robbins for Georgia.  She was gracious enough to share it with us.

At the beginning of the meeting Senator Goedde informed us that according to the Data Quality Campaign our bill was full of holes.  The DQC is the entity that’s tracking the progress of our Statewide Longitudinal Data System.  Asking their opinion on a data bill is like asking a meth addict where you should hide meth..

We spent the time being told we didn’t know what we were talking about.  Listening to the same sad talking points about how Idaho has always collected this data.  We were even told that Apple didn’t like the bill because it made accessing student data off limits for them.

In the end Senator Goedde told us if you don’t like the data collection just homeschool your children.  Sounds like they were really concerned with the protection of public school children’s data.

When all was said and done we got one small amendment added to the data bill.   The bill that was passed was a good start, but mainly all it does is allow Senator Goedde and Supt.  Luna to say they got a data protection bill passed.

We at no time endorsed this bill.