Re-register at your peril

Kate Fratti and the Re-Registration Blues

Re-register at your peril

The latest insult added to injury in Morrisville — where recent school budget cuts still sting for parents — is a student re-registration under way.

As in 2005, parents must prove residency with multiple documents. The purpose is to ensure that children living across the river in Trenton aren’t enrolling illegally in the Morrisville system. School board member Joe Kemp believes it is a myth that numerous city kids are being dropped off here for school. The re-registration could serve to dispel the myth or correct the problem if it exists.

What’s bothersome is that the reregistration is being conducted by community volunteers and not school staff. You must hand over personal information — a driver’s license number, a mortgage payment stub, your utility bill, a lease agreement, bank statement, tax return, etc. — to a virtual stranger selected by the school board president. No background check, no clearances, no assurances your information is safe from thieves or gossips.

The information-taker will record your driver’s license number and have your home, work and private cell phone number. He or she will know if you have a custody issue. Perhaps that you were late with payment of your electric bill, and that you lease your home, don’t own it.

Do you care? There’s been no mass protest of the process. Of course, parents are not informed that the person taking their information is not on staff.

By law, there is no need for formal clearances of volunteers because parents are not asked to provide details about their children other than the school they will attend.

Still, there is the possibility that you might reveal to the information taker that while your child’s home school is, say M.R. Reiter, he attends some other school to deal with a disability. Do you care who knows about your son’s or daughter’s learning challenges?

I would not hand over my papers or information about my child’s condition to just anyone, particularly not in the rotten climate that pervades the borough these days.

This school board president demanded at one point in the budget process to know the addresses and specific needs and services provided special education students.

Why?

Bill Hellmann said he wanted to protect against administrators padding the special education budget. The release of confidential kid information is illegal, however. Mr. Hellmann was told that repeatedly and still insisted on it.

In the end, the board was provided only information that did not impinge on a child’s privacy rights. Which is to say Mr. Hellmann was blocked from knowing that Johnny Doe at 123 Civil Liberties Street is challenged by severe autism and goes to Hope For Tomorrow School. He was provided the total cost.

That’s as it should be. The specifics of Johnny’s educational needs, and whether his parents live in a house or a subsidized apartment, are none of Mr. Hellmann’s business. Johnny’s entitled to an education under the law.

Nor is it my neighbors’ business whether I own my home or lease it or from whom. I’d prefer my being on welfare not be up for chit-chat at a bridge club meeting.

I don’t mean to demean volunteers, who for one reason or another feel strongly enough about re-registration to help with it. They may be very nice people. But they were organized by leaders who think privacy laws are a nuisance. Do they feel the same way?

You have to ask why this re-registration was not voted on or discussed publicly. It was merely a directive from the majority.

A defender of the volunteer process opines that if one has nothing to hide, one would cheerfully hand over his papers to anyone who wished to see them. That kind of logic isn’t just dangerous, it’s un-American.

Trust just anyone with my personal information? Not a chance. And surely not this crowd.

Kate Fratti, whose column appears on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, notes that if you ask that a district staff person handle your re-registration, the request will be granted.