Provides relative to information sharing for the purposes of Louisiana's Foundational Integrated Research System for Transformation (LA FIRST)

House Bill 632 amends the statutory framework for Louisiana's Foundational Integrated Research System for Transformation (LA FIRST) by modifying how student data is collected, defined, and utilized across the state's education system. The bill creates statutory definitions distinguishing "personal information" (limited to social security number, full name, and date of birth) from "nonpersonal information" (all other data in the system), and it expands the permitted uses of personal information from only generating unique identifiers to also enabling enhanced analysis, provided that personal information is removed from research files after the identifier assignment. The legislation broadens the entities required to participate in data sharing from city, parish, and other local public school boards to all public school governing authorities, including charter schools, and redirects the reporting pathway so that personal information flows first to the State Department of Education, which then shares it with the Kathleen Babineaux Blanco Public Policy Center. The bill also creates an exception to existing student data privacy protections under R.S. 17:3914 specifically for LA FIRST data sharing purposes.

The practical effect of this legislation requires every public school governing authority statewide to furnish personal information on both current and former students (going back at least five years of historical data) directly to the State Department of Education, with annual updates thereafter. This obligation extends to charter schools, which are explicitly made subject to the student information sharing requirements despite their general exemption from most statutory mandates applicable to traditional public schools. The State Department of Education gains authority to develop streamlined processes for managing these data flows and may integrate LA FIRST requirements into existing data-sharing agreements with schools and other state entities. Individual students and parents are affected insofar as their identifying information becomes part of a statewide integrated research system, though the statutory framework maintains that personal identifiers are removed from the actual research and analysis phases.

The bill operates within the existing legal structure of LA FIRST, which was previously established in R.S. 17:3138.12 to facilitate research on education, workforce development, and criminal justice outcomes through data-sharing agreements among state agencies. The legislation preserves the fundamental architecture of LA FIRST while clarifying and expanding its scope regarding K-12 student data. By creating a statutory exception to R.S. 17:3914's general prohibitions on sharing personally identifiable student information, the bill explicitly overrides that privacy statute for LA FIRST purposes, creating a clear legal pathway for the broader data collection and sharing regime. The extension of requirements to charter schools through an amendment to R.S. 17:3996(B) ensures uniform participation in the system across all public school entities despite charter schools' otherwise broad exemptions from state mandates.