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assistant principal called me and told me he didn't think it would be a good idea to come to school today that was the bottom line for me alleged rape self-harm harassment the most intimate details of life exposed des moines public schools naming the children experiencing it all what if this was your child how would you feel you would do whatever it takes to keep them safe these students looking for relief their parents hoping that comfort lies in another school district working to get them out but finding factors beyond their control are keeping them locked in they would not release her she's the only white white girl in her class the district stating that in an open enrollment denial letter now students must relive their worst days i felt like they failed her [Music] you're watching local 5 news imagine being in this situation we just described as a parent trying to get a fresh start and instead having your child's personal struggles revealed on a public website it happened and we found it local 5's rachel droz broke this story two weeks ago rachel you have learned much more in the weeks since yes stephanie i have found dozens of denied open enrollment requests these kids were trying to transfer out of the district some for safety and some for health reasons to protect these kids local five is hiding the identities of them and their parents one his grades went he went from straight a's to after another i felt like they failed her similar stories from four different families sharing their struggles of getting out of des moines public schools i mean for me my child was self-harming himself with razor blade this mother who we're calling christine tried transferring her son out of dmps in 2019. she just couldn't handle the anxiety but you know there was just too many kids too many situations a doctor recommending christine's son moved to a smaller district to help with his anxiety they offered to have him go to another middle school within the des moines district but it was our responsibility to get him there and i said i me and my husband both leave at 6am we don't have the means to get him to another middle school that's when christine says she realized dmps wasn't letting her child go she said it doesn't matter if you have a doctor but or not we're not releasing him so we finally had to just build a house and move out of the des moines district that's the only way we could get out and christine isn't alone when i didn't get a response back immediate within five days i packed everybody up and we moved this woman who we're calling eileen says her child was being severely harassed i mean these kids that were harassing her even came to our home another mom who we're calling samantha actually started paying for private school or how far is this little girl's anger gonna go towards my daughter i don't know what happens to her after i press charges samantha says her daughter was afraid to go to school because she had been assaulted and was being bullied she was actually being told at school that if she went back to school she was gonna she was gonna get it again tonight samantha is still working to get her daughter out for high school i'm requesting it again because how safe is she if she doesn't get approved i'm going to have to figure out how i'm going to pay for high school which is about twelve thousand eight thousand eight thousand to twelve thousand dollars a year but not everyone is able to move or enroll in private school the anxiety was so bad for him that he would wake up now that he after school and throw up these parents who were calling ashley and robert requested to move their third grader to a different district he was suffering from severe anxiety stress nightmares and panic attacks it's heart-wrenching to drive your kid to school and see the tears coming from their eyes and just hear the panic in their house and say i have a stomachache i can't go exactly why he has that stomachache and still haven't told him i need you to try to go to school ashley and robert say the depression and anxiety is a direct result from an incident that happened when their son was in first grade where he was allegedly choked by another student he was telling the kid to be quiet because he was going to get their table group in trouble and that's why the kid choked him according to school records the request was denied because the school has quote not been notified about any concerns and the teacher who witnessed the confrontation did not see the student choke their son but the parents say what this document says isn't the story they heard even what it says that the teacher says that she didn't see anything that's not what she told us and that's not what she told mr in fact me reading the document to them on the phone you literally haven't even heard anything from them no i haven't heard anything the first i heard about it was from your initial text was the first time the family heard about the reason the district denied the request and we never get a denial whether for anything or stating you know any of what you have read for the denial we never received any of that in total i spoke to eight families who had their open enrollment requests denied all told dmps can accommodate their request but almost all parents i spoke to disagreed with that conclusion how are we keeping these kids safe well rachel i just cannot imagine what these families are going through right now with all of this so what has dmps said about all of this well i have made several requests for an interview with des moines public schools superintendent thomas a heart to ask how these documents got up and learn more about the open enrollment process instead the district continues to send me statements through emails a lot of parents though are telling me they are very very frustrated because they feel like they were kept in the dark during this process and didn't hear much from the district until the decision was actually made and in some instances like you just heard from parents now they never heard anything at all it's really shocking rachel thank you so much we also know the open enrollment process can be tough to navigate for parents after looking into the process we still don't have all the answers local 5's ryan scott breaks down what we do and don't know about applying for open enrollment at dmps parents need to submit their open enrollment application between july 1st and march 1st to be eligible to enroll the following school year this goes for both students transferring to another school within the district or to another district entirely so how do you find out if you've been approved or denied we don't know after combing the dmps open enrollment policies and procedures nowhere do we see any protocol outlining how soon parents can expect a response of any kind from the district we do know that if your request is denied you have 30 days to appeal the decision for transfers within the school district two things can happen if your request is deemed eligible automatic approval or your student's name is added to a randomly generated waiting list for the next school year students with siblings already at the requested school get priority if your application is denied you must resubmit next year and if you're trying to transfer out of dmps you must submit an application to both dmps and the requested district ryan scott local 5 news we are iowa and rachel just today we heard from the district on how they notify families because as you heard we couldn't find it anywhere on their site they say they mail a letter with the decision the day after a family's case is reviewed but you are hearing otherwise yeah i've spoken with two different families who never heard if they were approved or denied the district further outlined their process saying parents are allowed to provide whatever documentation they think will help their case and if they want they can attend school board meetings to testify in person it's a process which is sure to frustrate a lot of parents moving through the open enrollment process can be challenging in any district but in des moines there is an extra hurdle and it all boils down to diversity local 5's elias johnson explains how the district decides which students get to go where those decisions are based on what des moines public schools calls its diversity plan here's how it works in des moines there has to be a certain ratio of students in each school who qualify for free and reduced lunch compared to those who don't the district says having a diversity plan is key for giving kids equal opportunities to learn and grow initially dmps and schools across the country used only race as their diversity plan metric but that all changed in 2007 when the supreme court ruled it unconstitutional after that the iowa department of education allowed districts to adopt diversity plans based on more than race including socio-economic factors english language learner status ethnicity and race just as long as race wasn't the only factor dmps one of five districts in iowa with a diversity plan theirs uses socioeconomic status of students so each year the district determines student demographics to compare how many kids are not eligible for free and reduced lunch the metric dmps uses to ensure diversity in schools that ratio then determines if a school building will allow open enrollment if a student wants to come into or leave the district there's a chance they will be denied that's because the diversity plan requires schools to maintain a certain socioeconomic ratio the same is true of a student wanting to move to another school within the district in studio elias johnson local 5 news we are iowa open enrollment gives parents the option to pick what they think is the best school for their kids but this policy can come at a cost for schools like dmps where we are seeing more students transferring out than transferring in here again is ryan scott breaking down the most recent information we could find on the district's website now there's two types of open enrollment transferring within the district and leaving the district all together over the last five years documents say the district is seeing a rise in both today the district has 554 fewer students than it had five years ago because of open enrollment the largest drop-offs coming the last three years even accounting for new students coming into the district overall enrollment is declining according to the most recent enrollment report dmps is down more than 1100 students from last year alone now keep in mind this is the year of the pandemic so parents may be deciding to withdraw students for a number of safety reasons and some of those students are expected to return to the district next year now that's a big picture here's what's happening within the district in the last four years just over 1400 students wanted to leave their school and go to another within the district 38 percent were approved this year right around 350 students applied for a transfer 59 percent were approved it's important to note transfers within the district don't impact state funding when students leave the district that's when numbers start to go down we looked into it and found that dmps receives right around 7 100 per student from the state on average so take that and multiply by the students leaving the district and the district is looking at losing just north of 8 million dollars in its budget reporting in studio ryan scott local 5 news we are iowa all of the reporting you just heard and that story is based on information pulled directly from dmps website earlier today though a district spokesperson did tell us that the information on the website may not be fully up to date with the most recent figures and all of this came onto our radar because of a mistake made by the des moines public school district and that included revealing the name of an alleged rape victim we are hearing directly from parents on how they feel about their kids personal information being published online local 5's rachel droz tells us why they feel the district didn't handle the situation well it's something i didn't expect to find seven confidential documents published on the des moines public schools website one of them identifying an alleged rape victim when i told the district about these documents they were taken down within 30 minutes after being up for almost a year on them the names of parents parents phone numbers the names of 28 students and very personal reasons why they were trying to transfer out of dmps i actually contacted two lawyers it's no wonder those i talked to on the list she was just so nonchalant like yep this happened sorry like that's pretty much it we're very upset to hear their information was out there it's bad enough that these things happen at school but to be published online for anyone to see again we've changed their names so we don't further victimize their children parents like christine who we introduced you to earlier say if her son knew about this he'd be devastated i couldn't imagine if somebody got their hands on that information and said something to my son because that would just put him over the edge would he do something where he would try to kill himself or would he try to fight somebody like i don't know what would happen parents i spoke to wonder how did a mistake like this even happen what else are they gonna make public what else are they gonna lie about samantha says the district didn't even tell her everything that was published online when they called me to apologize because my information was on there they told me that the only thing that was on there was my name and her name and my telephone number is the grade level that information was there but so was this details on why samantha wants her daughter out of dmps and why the requests got denied i've actually contacted the iowa board of education eileen also says she feels she didn't get the whole story they said it immediately got taken down but a dmps spokesperson told me in an email the documents were published for almost a year it doesn't surprise me that they weren't on top of it to take it down or that they even cared it wasn't until you contacted them and the media is involved that they even i mean they have to know what goes up on their website des moines public schools admits the documents should never have been published a district spokesperson emailed me a statement saying in part quote this was a mistake unfortunately when these documents from the 2019-2020 school year were moved to a folder in our online system they were not properly flagged to remain private in an email the district told me they contacted all but one family whose phone was disconnected that was february 1st three days later i spoke to robert and ashley who told me they had no idea about the situation just a little background like i said in the text it's relating to documents published online um so i'm sure that has the school district called you by now no they haven't i asked robert and ashley to check their voicemails and emails but they tell me there was nothing from the district explaining anything about these documents being published even if we don't answer our phones we still listen to every single voicemail and now there's been nothing of the store there's been no emails like i don't delete my my emails so i went back through them the district didn't tell me what specific family they couldn't reach but i know robert and ashley's phone was working because the number listed on the documents was the one i called there was one numbered listed on those documents that was disconnected when i tried to call two weeks ago that was the parent of the alleged rape victim identified by dmps stephanie back to you the concern about those documents being public especially an alleged rape victim identified making its way to lawmakers at the state house dumbfounding them we continue our coverage of families whose private personal stories were shared for all to find it may have broken the law and cost dmps federal funding the attorney who brought these documents to local fives attention claims dmps violated what's called ferpa it's the family education rights and privacy act protecting students education records un er this law schools need parents permission to release information from their students records now not all information is protected directory information like a student's name address phone number and date of birth all of that can be shared without consent the same day local 5 broke the news lawmakers expressed their anger on the floor of the iowa senate senator brad zone of ankeny saying dmps should have never denied an alleged rape victim's request to leave the district it disgusts me i cannot believe this happened i am suggesting to the residents of des moines to demand a resignation of their superintendent thomas earhart the school board needs to be replaced the only way you can replace them is at the ballot box i have never been so mad meanwhile republican lawmakers are working to remove voluntary diversity plans from even factoring into open enrollment decisions one such bill already passed the iowa senate 26-21 another bill originating in the iowa house passed just last week 56-32 now both bills must pass the other chamber many organizations have declared they're against both or one of those bills like the aclu of iowa area education agencies of iowa the naacp iowa safe schools and the iowa state education association isea says students thrive when they learn in diverse and inclusive environments and a diversity plan strengthens the school district by working to prevent segregation of all types including income or socioeconomic based segregation we'll be right back with a look at what's to come and we have found more documents of students information exposed rachel too many to fit in our half hour newscast yeah that's right just yesterday actually i found more names documents which appear to violate privacy laws we'll continue to update everyone at home in the coming weeks as we learn more rachel heartbreaking stories tonight thanks for your reporting and for everyone at home we'll see you at 10. you