We would like there to be a difference between parental access and the parent role.
Currently we have users such as Tutors who need access to the Parental Access permission to get into the student record but not give them the parent role so that they are not pulling into bulk email and lists as they aren't actually parents.
I cloned the teacher role and called it "Academic Tutor". This gives our tutors the ability to see the student's grades, assignments, etc. You just have to be sure to give group page access to that role in OnCampus and access to profile information, etc. We used to just give them the teacher role but for the reason you mentioned above, they were being pulled into queries that they didn't necessarily need to be in. The role of advisor could work for this as well.
I cloned the teacher role and called it "Academic Tutor". This gives our tutors the ability to see the student's grades, assignments, etc. You just have to be sure to give group page access to that role in OnCampus and access to profile information, etc. We used to just give them the teacher role but for the reason you mentioned above, they were being pulled into queries that they didn't necessarily need to be in. The role of advisor could work for this as well.