[carbocation]

1. FERPA information can be released in a "health" or "safety" emergency.

2. Records created by a designated official for the purpose of referring violations to police are not subject to FERPA.

3. Institutions have relatively broad power to designate people as school officials with legitimate educational interests, and thereby to designate who may receive FERPA-protected records. Some sources recommend to schools that they designate police or security personnel as "school officials with legitimate educational interests" for this reason [a].

a = http://www.campussafetymagazine.com/Channel/University-Secur...

[rayiner]

These cut in favor of the school, though.

1. FERPA information can be released in a "health" or "safety" emergency, but only for the immediate duration of the emergency, and only to "appropriate parties." Moreover, FERPA has a specific carve out for disclosing student health records to parents in the case of drug or alcohol abuse. Read together, the provision can be interpreted to imply that drug use is by itself not a "health" or "safety" "emergency" because otherwise the specific carve-out would be superfluous and statutes are interpreted to avoid making any parts superfluous.

2. Right, but this survey was created for the express purpose of evaluating student psychological health, not for referring violations to police.

3. The same advice notes that police with access to private student information can only disclose that information pursuant to FERPA. Moreover, in the case law there is an emphasis on keeping the separate "hats" of student resource officers separate.

[carbocation]

> These cut in favor of the school, though.

I completely agree.

> The purpose was to try and identify kids who needed additional psychological support, not get kids to cop to their drug use so they could be prosecuted. (Quoted from your prior post.)

One of the reasons I replied is to show that, regardless of the stated purpose of the survey, the FERPA rules appear to favor of the school even if they should decide to use the survey for other purposes. From my reading, FERPA may very well not protect these kids from a school's decision to ultimately convey this information to police.