In the run-up to school starting this month, nearly a dozen school boards have taken a stand against a new Maine law that requires schools to ask parents for their children's Social Security numbers. The state wants the numbers so they can track how students fare in the workforce after they've graduated from high school. Parents can opt out, but school officials worry about privacy risks.

"Just being an advocate for students and their parents, I don't feel, personally, that it's something that should be used," says Eric Haley, superintendent for Kennebec Valley Consolidated Schools, which includes Vassalboro, Waterville and Winslow.

All three school boards have unanimously resolved to discourage parents from disclosing their kids' Social Security numbers. And they want the state to rescind the law.

"A Social Security number and someone's birthday -- you can do some pretty heavy damage financially to that person," Haley says. "And the other thing is that we're not in control of the social security number. Once it gets uploaded to the state, the state is then in control of it, so it's another resource for people to hack into. The risk to students -- it bears no added gain for them."

But the state says the collection of Social Security numbers serves a larger good by making it easier to track students after graduation.

"The state and local schools spend about $2 billion a year, and we want to make sure that we're spending it as wisely and effectively as we can," says David Connerty-Marin, spokesman for the Maine Department of Education. He says Social security numbers allow the state to track former students for years, potentially decades.

This would be done by linking to databases in the state Department of Labor. Information about wages and unemployment, for example, is tied to Social Security numbers.

"Are they finishing college? Or if they go straight into the work force, are they getting into jobs that pay liveable wages and are they able to successful?" Connerty-Marin says. "Five years from now, a school can look and say, 'Hey, I know that this is the most effective program or one of the more effective programs that helps students transition into the work force or into college or other post secondary education."

Thirty other states already collect Social Security information from their students for data analysis, according to the Data Quality Campaign, a non-profit that promotes this type of data collection and gets most of its funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

"The conversation in Maine needs to focus on all what value does it bring, to not just educators, but also taxpayers and citizens and policymakers of being able to use richer information," says Aimee Guidera, executive director of the Data Quality Campaign.

Guidera says Florida was the first state to collect social security information 30 years ago, and it's been a success story.
"They can actually look across and not have it be just based on surveys or anecdotes, but literally tell you where the class of 1985 high school graduates are," Guidera says. "How many of them are unemployed, how many are employed in certain industries and how many have gone on and gotten higher degrees."

Guidera says she cannot think of any security breaches related to collecting students' Social security numbers. Connerty-Marin says that parents are right to be cautious about sharing Social Security information, but he says there's no need for worry.

"We have an extremely secure system, nobody is sharing data with colleges or prospective employers, or anything like that -- anything like that would be illegal, and we have very few people - one or two -- who even have access to this information," Connerty-Marin says.

"Even if we weren't concerned about database privacy, we would still think it wasn't a great idea to have a massive state database tracking students throughout their lives," says Zach Heiden, a staff attorney with the Maine Civil Liberties Union.
"At some point students and all of us have the right to be left alone, we don't want all of our personal information in government databases."

The MCLU has worked closely with more than a dozen of school boards that are considering, or have passed, policies discouraging the sharing of Social Security numbers. They include Brewer, Lewiston and Biddeford.

The Maine School Management Association, which has not taken a position on the law, expects more school boards will follow suit.

"Anecdotally, I hear a lot of concern about the collection of Social Security numbers with everyone I talk to -- superintendents, school board members," says Bruce Smith of the law firm Drummond Woodsum. Smith represents the School Management Association.

He says the state law does not specify when schools must turn over Social Security numbers. "You do have an obligation to do it but it doesn't have to be done by any particular date, so if you want to take some time before you do it that's OK. At some point, their not doing so or delaying it for a certain period might begin to look like they're not doing it at all, and that might cause some concern at the Department of Education."

Smith says the success of the data collection really rests on one group: the parents. For those who choose to share the information with their child's school, Smith has this piece of advice: Mail the permission form back or deliver it yourself -- don't let your second-grader carry such sensitive information around in a backpack.