Rep. Balboni chaired the House Education study committee for SB333. He is soft-spoken and articulate, and extremely knowledgeable about SB333 in particular, and education law in general. As a software engineer, he is very aware of the ways that data can be collected, stored and manipulated, and that there is much potential for misuse of databases such as the one being created. He is not thrilled about the database's existance, but knowing the trends at the federal level and the personalities in the DOE, he thinks that there will be increased amounts of data collected in the future, and that the data will be used for more and more purposes. He is supportive of homeschooling, knows many homeschoolers through his church, and is sympathetic to homeschoolers who wish to ensure their children's data remains outside of this database. He is willing to work with homeschoolers to see that their concerns are addressed.
During the study committee's discussions, the issue of including homeschoolers or non-public school students was never addressed. Because the legislation is affecting laws governing delivery of an adequate education, members assumed that the new law applied only to public school students. Rep. Balboni did agree that there was no language precluding inclusion of a home educated student in the database. He said that districts are free to include whatever they want in their local database, and might choose to assign UPI's to homeschoolers.
Rep. Balboni agreed that the DOE did not need this legislation to create a database with unique pupil identifiers. The DOE was purposely given a broad mandate and rule-making authority (see RSA 193-E:3 V?) so that it could be responsive to changes in federal mandates for data collection without needing to come back to the legislature repeatedly. They need to bring changes before JLCAR (Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules) for approval. Districts are required by law to provide whatever data is requested by the DOE. The new law does create a new mandate for school districts to request and store UPI's, but it also decreases the burden on districts, because statistics which they previously had to generate (sometimes by hand) are now to be done at the state level, at no cost to the district. Now when changes are made to data collection, they will need the approval of the legislative committee created to oversee delivery of an adequate education, as well as JLCAR.
We also discussed the language forbidding the dissemination of the UPI without a court order. He agreed that a strict interpretation of the law would mean that parents could not access their child's UPI without a court order, even if they were exercising their rights under FERPA (Family Education Rights and Privacy Act) to view their child's educational records. Therefore, a homeschooling parent cannot gain access to the information that would allow him/her to determine whether his/her child's records were or were not in the state database.
Assuming SB333 passes, if there are any homeschoolers who wish to amend the law to ensure information about their child(ren) does not end up in this database, they should call Rep. Balboni after the current legislative session ends, probably in mid-June. He lives in Nashua, and his home telephone number is (603)598-3851. Representatives are permitted to begin the process of creating legislation over the summer, before the November election. If they are not re-elected, they can seek a new sponsor for any legislation that is "orphaned", among those who were elected to a seat in the House.