GREENFIELD — In the wake of a widely viewed TikTok video, the Greenfield School Department is working to clarify that families are able to prevent the high school from providing military recruiters with students’ personal information.
Students were recently sent home with a back-to-school packet that included an opt-out form and a letter mentioning “a new law” that requires school districts to release names, addresses and phone numbers of juniors and seniors, unless parents or guardians decline to let that happen. The language appeared to create confusion, prompting the local school district to post online that the law is not new.
“This letter has been a part of back-to-school information for many years and has never been updated or expanded (an oversight on our part),” the announcement reads.
The Every Student Succeeds Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama in December 2015, requires personal information be given to recruiters upon request, unless a parent or guardian requests it not be released. The ESSA replaced the No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush in January 2002, which stipulated that high schools would lose funding if they did not give students’ information to military recruiters.
Greenfield’s public schools were driven to make the clarification after Shelly Allenby, who said she is a mother of 14-year-old twin boys who just started at Greenfield High School, posted a TikTok video that has garnered 1.4 million views as of Monday afternoon. The video voiced discontent over the letter’s wording, arguing that many parents will likely get confused and avoid filling out the form because they do not want their students’ information shared. She was also unhappy that the relevant legislation was referred to only as “a new law,” with no name included.
“Please tell me that I am not the only parent that is highly concerned,” Allenby said in the video.
Allenby said in an interview that she would never give the military her children’s information in “the political climate that we have right now.”
Since the video was posted on TikTok, Allenby said she has received feedback from across the country and some parents of children in other school districts have told her they did not receive an opt-out letter.
Greenfield’s Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning Stephen Sullivan said the papers that were sent home with students were “maybe misinterpreted a little bit.”
“It’s up to each family’s discretion as to whether they want to opt out or not,” he said.
The opt-out form must be filled out and returned to the Greenfield High School guidance office by the end of this week to have a student’s personal information withheld from military recruiters.