An Act protecting public higher education student information

Summary

Public college and university campuses are constantly inundated with public records requests for the personal information of students.  These requests seek information such as student names, home and school address, date of birth, telephone and cellphone numbers, email addresses, area of study, graduation date, parent's names and their addresses. Our campuses feel compelled to provide this information as it has been designated as a "public record" for the purposes of complying with the state's public records laws.  This legislation amends chapter 66 so that campuses would not be required to comply with public records requests for student data that is defined as an "education record" in the federal Family Education and Privacy Act (FERPA), including records that have been designated by campuses as "directory information."