Records of Law Enforcement Units. Records of a “law enforcement unit” designated pursuant to Article 2.4 of this Agreement do not constitute student records. This comports with the requirements of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which was amended in 1992 to exempt such records from the definition of “education records” (20 U.S.C. 1232g(a)(4)(ii)). Law enforcement records are records, files, documents and other materials created by a law enforcement unit for a law enforcement purpose and maintained by the law enforcement unit (34 C.F.R. 99.8(b)(1)). In the preamble to the FERPA regulations published in the Federal Register on January 17, 1995, the United States Department of Education stated: “…where a law enforcement unit also performs non-law enforcement functions, the records created and maintained by that unit are considered law enforcement unit records, even when those records were created for dual purposes (e.g., for both law enforcement and student conduct purposes). Only records that were created and maintained by the unit exclusively for a non-law enforcement purpose will not be considered records of a law enforcement unit” (60 F.R. 3467). When one or more law enforcement units have been established by the school district, the school district agrees to disclose to the appropriate law enforcement agency, or the Department of Children and Families, as appropriate, any records, files, documents and other materials of the law enforcement unit pertaining to the investigation of a violation of the law. The disclosure of these records to a law enforcement agency does not prohibit the use of these records for educational purposes, such as violations of the code of student conduct.
