Dear FERPA Professor,
I’m the Federal Work-Study (FWS) Program Manager at my institution and I have an interesting situation that I’m not sure how to navigate. We have a FWS learner/employee that has reached max-time but is apparently working on appealing it. In the meantime, I told the student she cannot participate (work) in her FWS role if she is not an enrolled learner (for us, that means at least one credit) for Q2 by census later this month. The learner has given bits of information to her supervisor (a faculty member) and now the supervisor is reaching out to me asking what’s going on, since that supervisor does not feel like she’s getting the ‘full story’ from the student.
My question is; how much information, if any, can I give the hiring leader? Can I tell the hiring leader that the student is appealing her max time and unless approved by our census, she cannot continue?
Thank you,
Erin Temayle
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Dear Erin,
Because the FWS student has to be in attendance at your institution in order to have the employment, these are education, not employment records that you are discussing. Consequently, any sharing of the records requires a consent from the student or that the disclosure meets one of the exceptions to signed consent found in §99.31.
The specific exception that would appear to work is §99.31(a)(1), the school official exception. However, the school official must have a “legitimate education interest” in accessing the student’s records. Depending on how your institution defines that term, this exception work because the supervisor is a institutional staff member and appears to need the access in order to do the assigned job of supervising the FWS student employee.
I hope this is helpful in answering your question.
Sincerely,
The FERPA Professor
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