Obtaining public records from the Cobb County School District is similar to requesting them from Cobb County government, but there are some differences due to federal laws governing student privacy.
Anyone may request public records from the CCSD at following addresses below:
Dr. Darryl York
Open Records Officer
Cobb County School District
514 Glover Street, Marietta, GA 30060
770-514-3870
openrecords@cobbk12.org
Like Cobb government, Cobb schools are also subject to provisions of the Georgia Open Records Act, and the CCSD also must reply to open records requests in three working days.
If open records requests are denied, school officials must cite a specific provision in the law that exempts that information from being released.
The information that’s available to the public from Cobb schools includes general administrative and operations records, school board proceedings, contracts and purchasing, budget and finance, curriculum and instruction, some hiring and personnel records, campus public safety records, SPLOST records and more.
These records include those in printed and electronic form, including tapes, computer records and correspondence, maps and photographs.
The exemptions are significant and are complicated, due to the federal law mentioned above. It’s called the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), first passed in 1974 (and also known as the Buckley Amendment), that governs the disclosure of student educational records.
The Georgia Attorney General’s Office produced this guide to the Georgia law and school records in conjunction with the Georgia Department of Education, the Georgia Press Associaiton and the Georgia First Amendment Foundation.
For students in K-12, the rights to educational records belongs primarily to their parents. They have the right to inspect educational records kept by school districts, and to request that information be revised for corrected if deemed inaccurate.
They also may request a formal hearing if those requests are denied. Likewise, K-12 parents must consent to any educational records of their children being released.
Certain non-educational information, such as a student’s name, address, date of birth and when they attended school, is generally considered public. So are records created after a student leaves a school.
After the age of 18, students have the rights to their educational records.
Test score information for individual schools and school districts is publicly available, but individual test scores of specific students are not.
Records produced by a school’s law enforcement department (Cobb schools has its own police force) are not protected from disclosure by the federal privacy law.
According to a revision of the law in the 1990s, “education records” subject to FERPA provisions do not include those “maintained by a law enforcement unit of the educational agency or institution that were created by that law enforcement unit for the purpose of law enforcement.”
However, FERPA does apply to records about internal student disciplinary matters.
Records that don’t need a parent or student’s consent to be released include “information necessary to protect the health or safety of the student or other individuals” and regarding a student whose “conduct poses a significant risk to the safety of that student, other students, and the school community.”
The Georgia Attorney General’s office notes, however, that in the case of the latter, another state law keeps most of that information confidential.
School employees, including teachers, may request that certain portions of their personnel records, such as Social Security number, date of birth, credit reports, financial data and insurance and medical information, be redacted.
The state guide to FERPA and schools includes more detailed appendices of what information is subject to open records laws and what may be exempted from disclosure.
There’s also a sample letter format. As with any other open records requests, the more specific, the better. There may be some fees that are charged for researching, retrieving and preparing documents for disclosure and for some copying expenses.
The Georgia First Amendment Foundation has published a guide to Georgia’s Sunshine Laws, which has further resources on open government.
Later this week East Cobb News will post similar information about obtaining public records from state and federal government agencies.
It’s all part of Sunshine Week, which is being observed March 10-16 by news organizations and open-government advocates.
Through Saturday, East Cobb News invites you to send your questions about how to get public information. E-mail: editor@eastcobbnews.com and we’ll get some answers for you.
General resources
- Sunshine Week
- National Freedom of Information Coalition
- Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
- Open the Government
- Center for Responsive Politics
- Georgia First Amendment Foundation
- Transparency Project of Georgia
- Georgia Public Records Guide
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