Natick Public Schools uses PowerSchool program to hide gender identity of students from parents

Parents Defending Education previously reported that Natick Public Schools has a policy that appears to keep the gender identity of students hidden from their parents. The parental advocacy group Parental Rights Natick has now reported that the district’s Student Information System called “PowerSchool” allows teachers to hide a student’s “private preferred name” from parents. The organization explains that “teachers can see this information for their students who are using a different identity at school vs. at home or with other ‘outside agencies.'”

Parental Rights Natick submitted a public records request to the district to confirm this is the case:

Through a public records request, we confirmed that Natick Public Schools is using this SIS parental exclusion procedure to flag “private preferred name” for students at Natick High School and Natick middle schools (although it’s unclear if any current middle school students have secret gender identities). It’s important to know that this SIS parental exclusion procedure is not based on any state law, so Natick Public Schools is hiding information from parents about their own children at its discretion.