Canyons School District could lose millions in federal dollars if it fails to give parents full access to their children's school records, including any gender-transition plans and sensitive survey results.

The U.S. Department of Education issued a "Dear Colleague" letter on Aug. 26 warning superintendents nationwide that schools blocking parents from student records risk losing federal funding. The letter, signed by Frank E. Miller Jr., director of the Student Privacy Policy Office, targets districts that treat gender support plans or other sensitive files as off-limits to families.

"Parents know what is best for their children," Miller said in a statement reported by the Deseret News. "Yet we continue to see schools adopt policies that shut parents out of their children's lives at school."

For Canyons, the stakes are real. The district received about $51.2 million in federal revenue in the 2021-22 school year, roughly 12% of its $433 million total budget, according to National Center for Education Statistics data compiled by Ballotpedia. More recent USAFacts figures put the federal share at 7.7% for 2022-23. The district's 2026-27 General Fund revenues total about $401 million, as approved at the board's June 16 meeting. Losing federal money would hit a district serving about 33,200 students across Sandy and surrounding communities.

The letter spells out two main compliance areas. First, parents have the right to inspect all education records, not just official transcripts. The DOE said some districts create "gender plans" for students and claim those documents fall outside the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). The letter rejects that argument, stating that all records directly related to a student count as education records parents can review.

Second, schools must get written parental consent before giving students surveys that touch on eight protected topics, including mental health, sex behavior, political beliefs and religious practices. The DOE said it now considers mental health screening instruments to fall under that consent requirement.

The department is already enforcing the policy. On Tuesday, Sept. 1, the Justice Department filed a federal lawsuit against Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools. It was the first suit using FERPA to assert a parent's right to know about a child's gender transition at school. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the same day: "For decades, schools operated with little accountability as federal parental rights laws like FERPA and PPRA went unenforced, allowing some districts to cut parents out of deeply personal matters involving their own children. That era is over."

The DOE has also threatened to cut California's $4.9 billion in annual federal education funding after finding the state maintained secret "gender support plans" in separate filing systems. California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued the administration in February 2026, calling the enforcement actions an overreach.

Canyons has not publicly responded to the Aug. 26 letter. The district's Board of Education did unanimously approve an update to its data privacy and governance policy at its May 19 meeting, though whether that update addresses the specific records-access requirements in the new federal directive is unclear.

The board held a meeting Tuesday, Sept. 1, at district offices at 9361 South 300 East in Sandy. No agenda item related to the DOE letter appeared in the posted agenda for that session.