I would guess that most people who know me would assume that I breezed through school without any visits to the principal's office. I earned excellent grades in school, participated in honor society, latin club and other school activities. I even organized blood drives for students. To most, I seemed like a good, eager student.
What most people don't know about my school years and what I doubt many would assume is I had a run in with our vice principal, the school administrator responsible for discipline. When I was a senior, occasionally I decided attending pre-calculus wasn’t absolutely essential to my learning. (I would regret this decision when I took calculus in college.) One day when skipping pre-cal, my teacher alerted our vice principal to my absence. When I returned to the building, I was summoned to the vice principal’s office, where I had an embarrassing conversation about the choice I had made. In the end, I received no punishment. But the visit is part of my academic history.
Remembering this incident makes me particularly worried about the Department of Education’s decision to create a database linking student records to social security numbers and sharing the database with other agencies. Would the disciplinary incident in my records have affected my life in a larger way if everyone in the world knew about it when I was 18, or if my employers had access to it now? And what about students that have more incidents like mine, who perhaps made poor choices when they were 14, but learned from their choices and improved over time? Should their childhood haunt them through their careers?
To date, four school committees have passed resolutions denouncing the law granting authority to the Department of Education to collect student social security numbers. School boards recognize the risks associated with social security numbers and have passed resolutions either urging the legislature to repeal the law or urging parents NOT to participate in the program. If you live in Bethel, Brewer, Mt. Abram or Waterville, I would encourage you to heed your school board’s warning. Several other school boards, including Portland,
Lewiston and Auburn , are considering similar resolutions.
If you’re a parent in Maine, we would urge you to consider the risks associated with social security numbers and databases before providing schools with your child’s social security numbers.