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The First Day of School
Be Prepared and Legally Ready for Public School
By Yvette Pompa
If we recall the first day of school, it probably entailed a pair of new shoes and excitement about seeing old friends and meeting your new teacher. For adoptive parents of "older" children, preparing for the first day of school entails much more. While you are doing everything possible to bask in the joy of just being Mom or Dad, you must attend to the other stuff that brings sense and order to your child's past and clears a path for the future.
A child's past is private, and as the new parent you must be sensitive and savvy about divulging it to others. This information, albeit verbal or in document form, must be carefully reviewed before any disclosure to the schools. It is, after all, about the respect and privacy of your child. Once you've given up your right and have revealed any information, it is then "out there" and difficult to regain. As an example, once you give legal permission for a document to be included in your child's cumulative file at school, it is there permanently. Of course, that being said, you can put up the big legal fight (exhaustive letter writing, costly attorneys) to have something expunged. But you can avoid this if you are aware of it in the first place.
This is where the important awareness of HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability) can aide a parent. According to Lisa Talucci, licensed art therapist and adoption specialist in Beverly, Mass., HIPPA is the first federal privacy law to recognize that all patients are entitled to privacy of their personal health information. "Children who are adopted from state child welfare systems may have extensive files of information that are a collection of reports by various sources," says Talucci. "These files often contain reports spanning different developmental stages, assessing social/emotional, academic and clinical issues. HIPPA laws protect information from being discussed and exchanged in unhelpful ways (including outdated information) between schools, clinicians and doctors."