Indeever Madireddy, 17, is an avid fish lover. Not as food, but as pets. The San Jose, California teen meticulously raises his freshwater angelfish from egg to adulthood. But when one of his prized fish died, he was struck with an idea: use the fish for genetic mapping. Indeever says this is important for use as “a model organism in future biomedical research.”

Working at biohacking space BioCurious, he successfully mapped the genetic code of his pet fish and submitted it to the National Library of Medicine’s Center for Biotechnology Information. 

Indeever’s passion for biomedical research is inspired by a passion for STEM education. 

“STEM, of course, is really important to me,” he says, “because it gives me the tools to solve and answer questions in the world around us.”

Click here to see & share Madireddy’s story — and check out this other recent coverage of teenagers breaking new ground in STEM: 

• A Teen’s Research on Bees’ Memory Is Helping Avert Colony Collapse Disorder
• Florida Teen Invents World’s First Sustainable Electric Vehicle Motor
• 14-Year-Old Wins $25,000 Prize For Robotic Hand He Built For Less Than $100
• Meet the 16 Under 16 in STEM Achievers

—Produced & Edited by Jim Fields

This article was published in partnership with The 74. Sign up for The 74’s newsletter here.

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After The 74 and LA School Report published an investigation revealing that hundreds — if not thousands — of student psychological assessments were posted on the dark web, Los Angeles public schools acknowledged that the highly sensitive information had been exposed.

Its admission on Wednesday, which included the news that 60 current students’ records had been compromised, comes five months after the nation’s second-largest school district was the victim of a ransomware attack and four months after schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho categorically denied that students’ psychological records were part of that breach.

“As the District and its partners delve deeper into the reality of the data breach, the scope of the attack further actualizes and new discoveries have been revealed,” Jack Kelanic, the district’s senior administrator of IT infrastructure, said in a statement. “Approximately 2,000 student assessment records have been confirmed as part of the attack, 60 of whom are currently enrolled, as well as Driver’s License numbers and Social Security numbers.”

The 74 and LA School Report published an extensive investigation by reporter Mark Keierleber Tuesday revealing that the records — among the most sensitive information school districts maintain on students — could be uploaded from a dark web leak site of the Russian-speaking ransomware gang Vice Society. The cyber criminal gang infiltrated LAUSD’s computer system last year and then released the records when the school district refused to pay an undisclosed ransom demand.

Read more: Trove of L.A. students’ mental health records posted to dark web after cyber hack

When presented with the results of the investigation Tuesday, district officials did not retract or correct Carvalho’s earlier statements, which a district spokesperson said “were based on the information that had been developed at that time.” The comments were made in early October, about a month after the cyber attack was first reported, and at a point where school district and law enforcement analysts had already reviewed about two-thirds of the data leaked on the dark web, according to the schools chief.

The district is now saying that notification to individuals whose information was posted has been slowed by the painstaking nature of the process and the fact that some of the records date back nearly 30 years. To comply with state privacy rules, the district posted a data breach notice to the California state attorney general’s office website in January disclosing that district contractors’ certified payroll records and their names, addresses and Social Security numbers were leaked.

School officials have not said anything publicly about notifying current or former students or district employees that their information has been compromised, but said Wednesday their investigation is ongoing and they “will continue notifying individuals as they are determined.” A day earlier, a district spokesperson said that no current or former students had been informed that their psychological records were posted online.

The records identified by The 74 were at least a decade old and involved special education students. They include a comprehensive background on the student’s medical history, observations on their home and family life, and assessments of their cognitive, academic and emotional functioning.

“It could ruin careers, it could damage families, people could get fired, it could potentially increase the likelihood of self harm if they suffer some kind of mental trauma from it,” a cyber security expert told the Los Angeles Daily News for a story it published on the district’s response to The 74’s investigation.

This article was published in partnership with The 74. Sign up for The 74’s newsletter here.

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Comprehensive national data is not yet available to show the full scope of disenrollment from public schools, but throughout the current school year, individual districts from Florida to Alaska and points in between reported significant enrollment declines ranging into the tens of thousands.

To examine these issues from the perspective of parents, the Progressive Policy Institute’s Curtis Valentine sat down for a Q&A with Keri Rodrigues of the National Parents Union, who shared her thoughts on the impact of parents pulling children out of schools during the pandemic.

On April 21, Rodrigues joined other experts in an online panel discussion led by Valentine and co-sponsored by The 74 and PPI, entitled “Where are All the Students?: Dis-Enrollment in America.” Hailly Korman of Bellwether Partners, Ray Ankrum of Riverhead Charter Schools, Colorado State Senator James Coleman and senior reporter Linda Jacobson of The 74 were also on the panel, which you can watch below.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity:

Q: Why is disenrollment of American students from public schools a topic important to parents?

A: It’s interesting. I don’t know that we discuss disenrollment as disenrollment. I think what we see is that parents are really disenfranchised. They are very concerned about what they’ve seen over the past 18 months from our public school systems, and they’ve been to the Promised Land of being able to choose different options that work differently or better for their kids. So, now I think that they understand there are different options and different scenarios available to them and they’re willing to exercise those options, especially in light of the fact that they’re very concerned about the long-term impact that the pandemic and learning loss is going to have on their children’s educational trajectory.

The fact that there might be another opportunity, a better opportunity, available in a different setting, is now on their radar. So, the idea of un-enrolling and enrolling someplace else is now available to them and all options are on the table.

Q: The Reinventing American Schools Project recently partnered with The 74 on a webinar where you were one of our panelists. Our panel also included a researcher, a school leader, a politician, and a journalist. Why is it important to have a parent voice in this discussion?

A:  I don’t know how you have a conversation about education, let alone reinventing education, without a panel that includes parents. We are the second most important stakeholder at the table. The first being our children, the students that we’re trying to get through our education system. We have a lot of information that we’ve collected about our kids, not just over the last 18 months, but during the span of their lifetime, that you really need if you’re going to achieve your goal of getting great outcomes for our kids. If we are all in agreement that that’s what we’re trying to do here, I think it’s critically important that you have our perspective, that you have our observations, that you understand our hopes and our fears, our concerns, and you get us on board. Because frankly, if we’re going to get our kids back on track, you can’t do that without parents and families.

Q: Has the discussion on disenrollment been given the attention it deserves?

A: I don’t think so, because I think that we have a tendency in education to, even during a period of limited disruption, want to just morph back into what’s comfortable, what’s familiar, a status quo that seems to work, and be very comfortable for the adults that run the system. Now, parents have really been to the Promised Land of seeing that they have choices and options, and watching how their kids learn, and how they don’t learn. When they engage, when they don’t engage. They’ve heard a lot that they like and a lot that they don’t like. So, I think that this has got to be a wake-up call, not just for parents and families, because frankly they’re making some really serious choices right now.

I talked to families all day today who are making choices about private schools, keeping their kids home in pandemic pods, homeschooling, all of this, all of these different options. And I don’t think our systems are prepared for the fact that parents now understand they have options and they will unenroll. That’s going to hit them in the pocket. Gone are the days of treating our children as just line items and per pupil expenditures that you feel you’re owed from the state budget. Parents are exercising their right to say, “No, we’re not going to put our kids into the public education system, because frankly we don’t trust you to do a good enough job.” The only way it seems like the system is going to learn from that lesson is by being hit in the pocket directly. You need to be in conversation with parents and you need to treat us respectfully, because fundamentally the option is ours. And if we find a better option by necessity or out of fear, because we don’t trust you to catch our kids up and help us to overcome this challenge, we’re going to take that option. It’s going to force the system to have to change because the budget is going to change.

Q: So what’s been missing from this discussion on disenrollment?

A: I think what’s been missing is an obvious correlation between needing to be in relationship with parents, families, and community, and rebuilding that trust, so that we’ll be willing to re-engage with schools. I think systems really take for granted that we’re just going to show up and do whatever we’re told. And the fact of the matter is, the alarm bell is sounding, and people are starting to say, “Well, hold on a second. What if the kids don’t come back? What’s going to happen?What’s going to happen to our budgets, to this comfortable status quo that we’ve grown so accustomed to?”

Things are going to have to change. And a lot of that comes down to, again, have we done the work of repairing the relationship between schools, and parents and families? Do we acknowledge the fact that there is now deep mistrust based on the interjection of politics into school reopening conversations and remote education situations, and how we’ve been serving our kids? I mean, even the idea around how many hours of live instruction our kids are getting. The asynchronous versus synchronous debates, and how our kids have been served. Families have seen that our kids were thrown to the wayside in many, many areas, and were not served well. And that has led to deep mistrust and a further damaging of a relationship, which in many communities was already broken without any kind of restorative justice. So, until there’s acknowledgement of that deep mistrust, the wounding of that relationship, parents may be willing to exercise those options.

As a result, this is going to have a consequence on the school districts budgets, because when our kids don’t show up, you don’t get that per pupil expenditure. You don’t get that money that you feel like you’re owed and adjustments are going to have to be made. There will be a reckoning.

Q: What do you hope people will take away from the webinar?

A: I hope that people are willing to come with an open mind and an open heart and are willing to recognize the fact that parents are really upset, frustrated, and fearful. That comes from a deep love for our children and we’ve got to be able to trust you. So, let’s have an honest conversation about what was lost, mistakes that were made, and how we’re going to do this together. If you want to do this in partnership with us, that’s the way to start rebuilding a relationship with parents and families, but you can’t come to it with a predisposed idea, or a set agenda, saying, “Well, this is ultimately what we’re going to do to your children, come hell or high water.” If you really want to engage with parents and families, you have to listen to us honestly. You’ve got to be able to take feedback. You’ve got to be able to acknowledge mistakes, and be willing to engage in a dialogue, and co-create what an equity-infused educational recovery is going to look like. If we can do that together and start that with this conversation, we may end up getting somewhere.

This article was published in partnership with The 74. Sign up for The 74’s newsletter here.