Warren Township student urges faster fix after preferred-name settings expose legal names

Pete Jones, a junior at Warren Township High School, told the board he and other students who signed preferred-name forms have seen their legal names appear on class printouts and be called aloud by substitutes, exposing transgender students and violating their privacy. "This is pretty much a privacy issue," Jones said, asking the district to move more quickly on a technical solution after changes in the district’s preferred-name policy in February.

District staff and board members acknowledged the problem and described it as a technical integration issue. An administrator said PowerSchool contains separate fields for a preferred name and a legal name and that the legal-name field is currently populating printouts, seating charts and other downstream systems such as Canvas and Google accounts. The administrator said they would "follow-up with our data systems manager to see if there's a way that we can change that" and noted that some PowerSchool fields are customizable while others are controlled by the district’s Active Directory.

Jones suggested short-term steps that might reduce exposure, including removing legal names from substitute printouts and discouraging teachers from using spreadsheets that surface legal-name fields. "The only way to communicate clearly that the name should absolutely not be called out is to remove it entirely," he said.

Board members thanked Jones for raising the issue publicly and said they would direct staff to do a deeper technical review and return with options. One board member described taking "a deep dive into it" and readdressing the item if needed; administrators did not commit to a specific timeline. The discussion closed with board agreement to investigate solutions and to consider interim changes to classroom printouts while staff pursue system-level fixes.

Next steps: board members asked administration to consult the district’s data systems manager and Active Directory administrators, explore what PowerSchool fields can be prioritized, and report back to the board with recommended short-term mitigation and a timeline for a permanent fix.