Committee backs data-privacy bill giving parents and students a limited "right to be forgotten" in state education datasets

Senate Bill 118, sponsored by Sen. Daniel Zolnikov, would establish a statutory process allowing parents and eligible students to request removal of certain personally identifying information from state‑level education datasets (a “right to be forgotten”) while preserving records that state or federal law requires to be retained. The bill also directs the K‑12 data task force and the education and workforce data governing board to adopt detailed data‑security, retention, breach notification and privacy policies for state education data.

Zolnikov said the measure is designed to increase public trust in state data collection by giving families a say in whether their child’s information is included in statewide analytic systems. He told the committee that the bill focuses on data that is sent to the state database (not on local school records kept at the district level) and on establishing safeguards for security and transparency. The bill’s sponsor and state Chief Data Officer Adam Carpenter said removal requests would not affect local records used for school operations or transcripts; they apply to the consolidated state‑level database intended for trend analysis and policy evaluation.

Carpenter and other informational witnesses described layered security practices for state systems (FedRAMP and “defense‑in‑depth,” multifactor authentication, network white‑listing) and explained that analysts typically work with de‑identified or anonymized data for analysis; personally identifying information is used only for linking records during processing and then removed. Committee members asked which specific categories of student data are covered; the sponsor pointed to the bill’s definition of educational data (section 6) and clarified the measure excludes data that state or federal law must retain.

Committee members also asked whether the law would apply retroactively to previously collected records; the sponsor said the law took effect July 1, 2025, and implementation questions about historical records would be considered in execution. The committee amended the bill to specify that duties fall to the Office of Public Instruction (OPI) and to add an annual OPI report to the education and workforce data governing board describing implementation of the right to be forgotten. The committee approved the amendment and the bill in executive action; vote was 12–3 on the bill as once amended.

Senate Bill 118 now goes forward with a committee‑recorded roll‑call tally (12 for, 3 against). Representative Seekins Scribes (named in committee) agreed to carry the measure to the floor.