Viewing School Video Footage

 Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), schools have a duty to protect the privacy of all students. However, more often than not, parent request to view video footage is denied citing FERPA. The law is for the protection of the student and but such protections were not intended to keep information from the parents of child in certain circumstances.

Educational Records

FERPA protects “educational records”. In order for a record to qualify as an “educational record”, it must be 1) maintained by an educational agency or institution or by a party for the agency or institution, and 2) be directly related to a student. The second prong, “directly related” is trickier as one often wonders what qualifies as “directly related”. The short answer is it must be more than just incidentally related to the student.

Some major issues that would qualify a record would be 1) if the video was used against the student for a disciplinary action, 2) the video contains personally identifiable information or 3) the video shows a violation of law, a medical emergency or injury by or to the student.

In such cases, the footage is likely an educational record that the district must protect. That protection does not however limit the parents of such student from viewing that footage. In fact, FERPA dictates that parents have the right to their child’s educational record. Therefore, in such cases listed above, the parent would have the right to view such footage.

Student Records and TN Public Records Act

The TPRA and FERPA are often confused. The former provides access to public records while the later protects records. Additionally, under TPRA, there is an exception for student records that prevents them from being released separate and apart from FERPA.

One last note, TPRA provides provisions to restrict video surveillance footage from the public unless public safety requires the release. Parents need to know that even the release is prohibited under TPRA (i.e. security exception) they are still entitled to see the footage of their student if the footage qualifies as an educational record.

For more information on TPRA, check out our series in the blog on Public Records.