Protecting Student Confidentiality When a School Crisis Hits
BY JOE DONOVAN/School Administrator, February 2020

Joe Donovan

When a crisis situation arises in a school community, superintendents and their colleagues must work quickly to address the issue and communicate with parents, staff, students and other stakeholders.

But in the midst of doing so, public education leaders can face a dilemma. They must balance the need to communicate openly and honestly about a situation while meeting their legal and ethical responsibility to protect students’ privacy.

At times, striking this balance can be frustrating and stressful. Recently, we advised a superintendent on a situation in which a high school student consumed a substance before coming to school and showed signs of an overdose in a classroom during the first period of the school day. First responders came and the student was transported to a hospital for treatment.

Within an hour, rumors had begun swirling on social media and the school was being inundated with calls from concerned parents as well as news media. The superintendent was being pressured to share the entire story, but she could not do so in the interest of student confidentiality. Instead, she simply stated that a student had experienced a medical emergency and that the school day was proceeding as usual.

Careful Sharing
School and district leaders are likely to take a lot of heat in these situations for not communicating openly enough — at least in the eyes of parents, community members and news organizations. There’s a tendency to want to share as much as possible right away.

In some situations, sharing details is well-advised, such as when there’s an ongoing threat to school safety. In other cases, especially those directly involving specific students, education leaders must be careful about how they communicate about a situation. Our first responsibility always is to protect students.

In November 2018, a group photo surfaced on Twitter depicting high school students in Baraboo, Wis., making a highly offensive gesture. In the photo, taken in front of city hall shortly before the previous spring’s prom, most of the 56 students had their right arms raised in a way commonly associated with a Nazi salute. (See related article.)

News organizations worldwide immediately jumped on the story, and the Baraboo school district was flooded with rage-filled phone calls, e-mails and social media posts demanding action. Hundreds of people called for the students in the photo to be suspended or expelled from school.

This put district leadership in a difficult position. The district’s administration still needed to investigate and determine exactly what happened, why the photo was taken and who was involved. It was too early to take any disciplinary action. The district would not have been able to share those details anyway, as doing so would have violated its responsibility to protect student confidentiality.

The school district quickly issued a brief statement indicating it was investigating the photo and that the image depicted did not reflect the value of the district or community. Then, once the facts were known, the superintendent issued a more detailed statement sharing what the school district planned to do in response.

An Obligatory Act
Our advice to educational leaders is to regularly remind parents, staff and other stakeholders that their districts have a professional and moral responsibility to protect students and their confidentiality. In these situations, silence from a superintendent or principal is not an effort to hide the truth. Rather, it comes simply as an obligation to their students.


JOE DONOVAN is president and founder of the Donovan Group in Milwaukee, Wis.