Students Opt Out

School response was incomplete. Fitchburg High School did not provide a breakdown by grade as requested.
School reported 181 Students have opted out.
This represents 13.6% of all students.

1331 Students in Fitchburgh High School
302 in Grade 11
277 in Grade 12

Fitchburg H.S. does not make it clear to students that they may choose to opt out themselves.

Some schools have chosen to downplay notification requirements and other schools have chosen to use the NCLB guidelines and re-write them with both good and bad results. Some principals have shortened their explanation down to simply a paragraph for a newsletter blurb. Fitchburg H.S. Princpal Richard D. Masciarelli is the only area school leader that has apparently purposely misinformed students and parents.

Masciarelli’s notification letter lies to parents and students by stating in his opening lines that “The recruiting services [sic] have requested this information in order to inform students about scholarship programs, tuition assistance and other educational and vocational training opportunities available from the military.” This is not stated anywhere in the NCLB legislation, nor is it reflective of any other schools’ notification. It is apparently a purposeful effort by Principal Masciarelli to obfuscate the truth. He attempts to buttress his deception by additionally misinforming parents that the release of student data is required by “Federal, state and district regulations” while completely avoiding any reference whatsoever to NCLB.

Perhaps he sould read the “School Recruiting Program Handbook” the Army was recently forced to release. In their own words, they state that their efforts are designed to help recruiters “in penetrating their school market and channeling their efforts through specific tasks and goals to obtain the maximum number of quality enlistments” The handbook continues on the importance of following “an integrated recruiting prospecting-lead generation program that ensures total market penetration.” This is the real way that recruiters talk about our schools and our children.

Principal Masciarelli apparently also has a problem following directions, as he failed to properly and fully provide the data requested in my public records request.

Students at Fitchburg High School or parents that feel they were not properly informed by Principal Masciarelli that private student information would be released to military recruiters have two options. Parents and students can contact the school and ask that a better notification be immediately put in place and/or they may file a complaint under the Family Rights and Educational Privacy Act (FERPA) expressing the failure to Fitchburg H.S. to notify them the release to the military of private student data. Letters of complaint should be sent to; Family Policy Compliance Office, U.S. Department of Education, 600 Independence Avenue, SW Washington, D.C. 20202-4605

Fitchburg High School Opt Out 2006 (pdf)

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Fitchburgh High School Opt Out Report (PDF)

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 11th, 2006 at 4:17 pm and is filed under Massachusetts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.