Cherry Hill mistakenly released names of at least 92 students who opted out of new sex-ed classes, district says

The Cherry Hill school district has been accused of violating student privacy by mistakenly releasing the names of at least 92 students whose families opted-out of sex-education classes in the 2022-23 school year.

The names of the elementary school students were released in September 2023 in response to an Open Public Records Act request seeking information about how many parents were excluding their children from classes after the state adopted new controversial standards on sex-education concepts that include gender identity, puberty, and masturbation.

» READ MORE: Here’s why the revised sex-education standards in N.J. are controversial.

The families of an additional 82 children were also notified that their names may have been released, Superintendent Kwame Morton said this week.

Morton acknowledged the mistake and said the names were removed last week from the OPRAmachine, a website that assists requesters with accessing public records, where the 2023 request had been filed. Morton said the names were redacted in the district’s PDF files, but showed up when they were converted to a different format by OPRAmachine.

Cherry Hill used the incorrect redaction procedure to format a digital record, and that allowed the names to appear despite being blacked out, said Charlie Kratovil, a leader of the OPRAmachine.

District lawyers sent a letter to the website to get the names removed once they were made aware. The district has implemented new security measures, Morton said, and employees were also retrained on confidentiality rules.

“In no way shape or form was the intention to release any names,” Morton said Wednesday. ”The important thing is not ever is it our intention to harm any child.”

In a complaint submitted online last month, parent and former school board candidate Harvey Vazquez asked the U.S. Department of Education to investigate whether the district violated the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, which protects students’ privacy and education records.

Vazquez, whose 6-year-old son was on the opt-out list, brought up the issue last month at a school board meeting, where Morton says he was first made aware.

Vazquez said the students whose names were made public without parental consent attended Russell Knight, Bret Harte, Richard Stockton, and Thomas Paine elementary schools. A parent notified the district about the release of the names in November 2023, but nothing was done, he said.

Morton confirmed that no action was taken, but said he was not informed about the release at the time.

“A lot of parents are upset,” said Vazquez. “Somebody needs to be held accountable.”

The unauthorized disclosure came to light during a hotly contested race for three school board seats in Cherry Hill among Vazquez and nine others. Vazquez said he discovered the release after he began investigating the New Jersey Public Education Coalition, which labeled three other candidates in the race as “like-minded.” Vazquez narrowly lost.

The coalition, which touts itself as a nonpartisan group of educators, parents, and other stakeholders, made the OPRA request as part of a statewide project surveying districts. The group wanted to dispute claims that a majority of New Jersey parents had opted out of the new sex-education standards, said its founder Michael Gottesman.

The revised guidelines, which took effect in 2022, prompted an outcry from some parents. The state allowed districts to decide whether to amend their curricula to meet the expectations of what students should learn by the end of second, fifth, eighth, and 12th grade. Parents who believe the instruction conflicts with their moral or religious beliefs may have the student excused from that portion of the course.

Gottesman said the coalition’s survey results were analyzed by an outside vendor, and the coalition never saw the students’ names. He said he only recently learned that names had been disclosed.

“As a coalition, we would never release that type of information,” Gottesman said.

Bridget Palmer, one of the newly elected school board members, said she wanted the district to make policy changes to protect students’ privacy and prevent information from mistakenly being released.

“There is no arguing that there was a huge mistake made,” Palmer said. “You can’t undo what has already been done, but we can take steps to make sure it never happens again.”

Vazquez wants the district to better explain how the lapse occurred, and wants there to be disciplinary action against anyone found responsible.

“There needs to be a public apology,” he said. “That’s the least they can do.”