Opinion ID: 461208
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: privacy interest after reevaluation meeting

Text: 65
66 The majority has followed up their finding that Alinovi had no subjective interest in the privacy of her paper before she brought it to the reevaluation meeting by finding that even if she did, she abandoned that expectation of privacy when she brought the paper to Midland Street School. They reach this determination despite the district court's determination that Alinovi believed her paper to be private and in spite of the evidence. 67 The record shows that Alinovi, at a private meeting prior to Chris' reevaluation, sought advice from Generelli, supervisor of special education teams for the Midland Street School. At this meeting she had confided to Generelli that she felt she had been rebuffed by the principal in her efforts to talk to him about Chris and asked Generelli's advice. Generelli advised her that if she was concerned about the adequacy of Chris' educational plan, she could request a reevaluation, which she did. Alinovi testified that when she gave Generelli the paper just prior to the beginning of the reevaluation, she expected that Generelli would treat the information in the paper confidentially, as she believed he had treated the comments she had made at their private meeting. 3 The evidence shows that Generelli accepted the paper, immediately put it into his briefcase, and did not refer to it or read from it at any time during the evaluation. When Alinovi asked for it back at the end of the meeting, Generelli promptly and without reservation handed it to her. The next day when Principal Bombard requested the paper Alinovi told him that she had fulfilled her duty to inform the evaluation team of all information she had concerning Chris but that her paper, written for other purposes in another context, was private. The district court found that the plaintiff fe[lt] ... that the report was her private paper.... I would uphold the district court and find that Alinovi had a subjective expectation of privacy in her paper even after she gave the paper to Generelli.
68 The majority found that Alinovi had no legitimate privacy interest once she brought the paper to Midland Street School because in giving it to the chairman of the special education evaluation team she exposed her paper to public view. In so ruling, I believe that the majority has misapplied Illinois v. Andreas, 463 U.S. 765, 103 S.Ct. 3319, 77 L.Ed.2d 1003 (1983), the case on which it relies. In Andreas, a customs officer at an airport opened a container holding marijuana. He notified Drug Enforcement Agents who saw the marijuana inside the container and then resealed the container and delivered it to the addressee's residence where Andreas took possession of it. When Andreas was arrested, he tried to assert a privacy interest in the marijuana. The Supreme Court ruled that no protected privacy interest remains in contraband inside a container once government officers have lawfully opened the container and examined its contents. Andreas, 463 U.S. at 771, 103 S.Ct. at 3323. 69 Alinovi was obviously not asserting a privacy interest in the physical sheets of paper that were viewed, but in the thoughts expressed thereon, thoughts which clearly were not exposed in any meaningful way. 4 Therefore, I cannot agree that when Alinovi brought the paper to the reevaluation meeting and gave it to Generelli, who immediately placed it inside his briefcase and returned it to her unread, that she had exposed the paper to view and thereby lost her expectation of privacy.
70 Because the majority grounds its decision that Alinovi's privacy claim fails on the reasons that I have previously discussed, they did not address what I believe to be the real issue in this case: Whether Alinovi submitted her private academic paper into the educational evaluation process when she gave it to Generelli at the meeting and thereby transformed it into a professional work product. 71 Clearly the school has a substantial interest in gathering the full panoply of information available on a student in order to implement the child's Individualized Educational Plan (IEP) pursuant to its responsibilities under Chapter 766, Mass.Gen.Laws Ann. ch. 71B (West 1982). The regulations for the implementation of Chapter 766 require that the Administrator of an evaluation team direct that assessments be prepared by a TEAM of specialists. The TEAM specialists typically include the child's teacher, adjustment counselor, physician, psychologist, etc. Each person preparing an assessment must summarize in writing the procedures employed in conducting their assessment, results, and their diagnostic impression as well as define in detail their view of the child's needs. Mass.Admin.Code tit. 603 Secs. 319.0-319.4. Section 310.3 of the regulations requires that current records be kept of all information relating to evaluations. Records must be available for inspection by the child's parents and can be useful in review of the child's progress after an IEP is adopted. 72 Given the clear import of the regulations, I have no doubt that once a paper is submitted by a TEAM participant and accepted into the evaluation process to help in the child's evaluation, whether read or not, it becomes part of the child's educational record. I would find this to be so regardless of whether the paper was previously a research paper, a journal entry or, as is normally the case, was prepared specifically for the evaluation. 73 If, under the facts of the case, Alinovi's giving of her paper to Generelli transformed it from a private paper into a professional work product, then the administrators of the special needs program would be deemed to be on notice of its contents whether or not they read it, and Alinovi would have lost her right of privacy in it. If the paper was not accepted into the evaluation process and was not, under Chapter 766, a submission that became part of the student's record, then I believe we should follow the well-established law that when a search is based upon consent and consent is withdrawn or revoked the searchers must abide by the limitations placed upon them by the consenting individual. See, e.g., Linn v. Civatero, 714 F.2d 1278, 1288 (5th Cir.1983); United States v. Ward, 776 F.2d 143 (9th Cir.1978); Mason v. Pulliam, 557 F.2d 426 (5th Cir.1977). See also LaFave, Search and Seizure Sec. 8.1(c) (1978); Model Code of Pre-Arraignment Procedure Secs. SS 240.3 (Official Draft 1975). 74 Since the district court did not address what I conceive of as is the central issue, I would remand for factual findings on it.