Tewksbury School Data Breach Cited by State Officials

A Tewksbury Public School’s data breach of its out of district special education student information last spring was not in compliance with state law, according to findings by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

The DESE found the breach to be not in compliance and that the release of that data could have led to the identification of students, the Lowell Sun is reporting.

Now the Tewksbury School District has to train all staff before the upcoming school year begins, as well as submit a copy of that training agenda and signed attendance sheets, as well as a copy of the Tewksbury School district’s policies and procedures to the DESE, according to the Lowell Sun.

In early April Tewksbury Superintendent of Schools John O’Connor apologized to outraged parents after private student data was was posted online. The special education student information was posted online earlier in the month, much of which was information contained in a document included in a 222-page School Committee packet.

The documents detailed out-of-district placements for 83 students. A spreadsheet includes a list of the students with out of district placements, and includes other information including a ranking of parents as “cooperative,” “somewhat cooperative,” and “not cooperative.”

Two weeks later, Tewksbury School Committee member Lisa Puccia resigned citing the data breach, as a reason she felt she couldn’t fulfill her role on the School Committee. Puccia’s child’s information was included in that list published online.