MDG,
I understand your point, but sometimes it just goes too far. One school, as I reported, wanted all of our bank statements for the previous six or twelve months. While that may sound innocuous enough, keep in mind that we pay doctors from our checking account as well. It’s not the schools business to know which doctors I see. This is especially so since you can learn a lot about a person based on what doctors you see. It doesn’t take a nuclear physicist to figure out that if someone in the household is seeing Dr. X and Dr. X is an oncologist, that someone in the household is facing some serious issues. But the point is that it’s none of the school’s business if someone is seeing an oncologist, a psychiatrist, a physical therapist or any other doctor. And, furthermore, even if the school *must* know (for some reason that I can’t fathom), can they guarantee me that the info will remain confidential? All it takes is one gossip in the office to start spreading rumors (even if the rumor may be true).
And it’s not just medical issues. Similar issues can be raised with payments to attorneys, accountants, marriage therapists, etc. All of these things can reveal lots of information to the school that they frankly have no business knowing.
I appreciate the need for a tuition committee to have a good idea of a family’s finances in the aggregate — but when they start getting down to the individual transactions, I felt that there was simply much too invasive and had the potential to violate my privacy in ways in revealing things that the school had absolutely no right to know.
I know that some may say that if you’re asking the school for charity, then you have no right to privacy at all. I disagree — vehemently.
The Wolf