Gutiérrez asks about protecting multilingual students' data

And my last question, and I know, I mean, you responded on kind of our city's commitment to

doing what we do best, which is continuing to really push for diversity and not necessarily what the federal government wants us to do.

But just lastly on that, is there any special efforts that NYCPS or Mayor's Office of Child Care are taking to protect multilingual students?

Multilingual students and family data, special efforts to protect their data from any kind of federal oversight.

I'll just, again, reiterate the sort of broad value statement and then to my colleagues to talk about the particular data.

But, you know, whether it is this latest policy proposal from the federal government around Head Start, some of the other policy statements the federal government has made around

English and the stance towards immigrant students, we in New York City will always protect our immigrant students, our multilingual students, and they will always be safe in our education system.

That speaks to both their ability to be themselves, to speak their language, to learn in the language that they speak at home, and to have their information protected and kept safe.

But I'll turn to some of my colleagues on the specific policies.

Thank you.

In my previous role as principal, what you just described is like a very real situation, like they happen, right?

But I do want to emphasize that what New York City Public Schools educators from

the crossing guard to, you know, the chancellor, our priority is to ensure that our students'privacy is protected and then we support the families that, you know, they come from.

What New York City Public Schools has offered as specific guidance for what to do in that very real situation are clearly outlined as far as like what the protocols are when dealing with like non-local law enforcement or something like that.

In addition to that, though, a lot of the language data that we collect for the purpose of instruction and meeting those instructional needs is not correlated or used for identifying a child's immigration status.

And with also this understanding that a multilingual learner may not be an immigrant and an immigrant may not be a multilingual learner, too.

Right.

So thinking about just the whole like ethos of like what that means for immigrant families.

What also governs our day-to-day practices is the idea of, like, making sure that we are honoring and following the FERPA laws to the T.

So those three different kind of, like, things that we consider when we're protecting our students is what kind of guides our day-to-day practice.

And if, for some reason, there's some kind of, like, back and forth engagement, we are advised, directed to deal with or get our next steps from legal counsel.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.