When she arrived at The Academy for Scholarship and Entrepreneurship, a secondary school on East 228th Street in the Bronx, Sariba needed her grades to take advanced classes and to begin to apply to college (her dream is to attend Howard University). But without her transcript, her record had gaps that could not be explained away. There was no way to be certain Sariba had taken the required classes and Regents exams: Their absence meant that she would not graduate on time, or be able to apply for college.
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For many poor and immigrant families, a parochial school – most often, Catholic school – seems the most reliable choice for a rigorous education. In Manhattan and the Bronx, 94 percent of Catholic-school students are black or Hispanic, according to the Inner City Scholarship Foundation; two-thirds are from households with incomes below federal poverty guidelines.
Karen Ristau, president of the National Catholic Education Association in Arlington, Va., attributes church schools' popularity among low-income families to the schools' "high level of academic achievement, moral values, and high graduation rates," noting "outstanding successes recorded by students of low-income families and students from the inner city."
No matter what kind of non-public school families choose, however, the relationship between student and school is governed by a contract. And that contract typically permits a school to withhold student records if financial accounts are in arrears.
"It's like hiring a plumber," Karl Friedman of the New York State Education Department told City Limits. "It's a contract for a service with a provider. Records are collateral to accept the payment."
This limbo is legal
Students in public schools can access their records as outlined in the Family Education Rights Protection Act, or FERPA, because the schools receive public funding, according to Nelson Mar, Senior Staff Attorney and Education Law Specialist at Legal Services NYC–Bronx, which provides free legal counsel to low-income people. But "private schools are not governed by much of state regulations or education law."
Because private schools may hold student records as collateral against future payment, children wind up in a kind of educational limbo.
"It is a little striking, for a school that is founded on principles of faith, that they take such a hard line with tuition," Mar says. Acknowledging that state law and individual contracts make the arrangement legally legitimate, Mar adds: "All of those macro factors don't, at the end of the day, make the child whole."
Kathy Shea, Executive Director of the Parents' League, a Manhattan-based organization affiliated with the city's independent (non-parochial) schools, says that the League hears from parents in need of midyear financial aid, especially when a job loss or financial changes threaten a child's enrollment. But, she told City Limits, she has not heard of schools holding back transcripts, even when a student leaves or is invited to leave.
Even though the state requires high school students to pass Regents exams ahead of graduation, they do not maintain individual student records, relying instead on reporting from the schools. New York City does not track or analyze how many students come into the public schools from parochial or independent private schools.
