Student Information News Conference Text 7/11/08

I am Rebecca Sharber, Director of Schools for Williamson County. Thank you for attending today and for helping us share factual information about our situation with our community.

I want to thank the parents of Williamson County Schools for their patience and understanding and the positive suggestions they have shared as we have conducted our investigation and gone public with this information. I understand the anxiety that our parents are experiencing. Many of our own employees have also been affected either with their child’s or their grandchild’s information being posted.

Yesterday afternoon, we were able to confirm the names of students who were affected by this breach. We have learned that most students who took the second grade TCAP achievement test and most students who took the ACT test during the 2006-07 school year had social security numbers on a private website during August of 2007.  No other students had social security information posted.

Our review of the records shows that 3,052 ACT students and 2,117 students who took the second grade test were affected. Most students in grades three through eight during the 2006-07 school year had raw testing data posted, but not social security numbers. This group consisted of about 11,000 students. No student addresses were posted.

In addition, many elementary teachers’ names were listed, but no personal information was posted about teachers.

I want to review the time line of events for you, since everyone has gotten this information piecemeal. A principal who had been contacted by a parent brought this to our attention on June 26^th. The information given to us indicated that our assessment specialist, Chris Nugent, was involved. This was the first we had heard of this situation. We began our investigation immediately asking Mr. Nugent to gather all data that could possibly be associated with this situation. We thought at that time he would be able to supply the names of students possibly involved in the most timely manner. When Mr. Nugent was unable to get that information for us, our attorney Jason Golden contacted the Liberty Coalition, the organization that had posted the Internet report presented to us by the principal. Yesterday afternoon, the Liberty Coalition was able to provide the names of the students affected. Our investigation indicates that the student information was posted on a private website created by Mr. Nugent sometime during the month of August, 2007. On August 28, 2007, the Liberty Coalition notified Mr. Nugent that private student information was on his web site. On August 29, 2007, the web site was shut down. Mr. Nugent did not notify school authorities. Again, the first the district heard of this was on June 26 of this year.

Our investigation has established that Mr. Nugent had confidential student files on the same thumb-drive with his personal files. We believe that when Mr. Nugent uploaded his personal files to a web site he created, he inadvertently uploaded our student files. Our student information was not being used as part of this employee’s course work for a graduate degree as was reported on the Liberty Coalition’s web site.

Our next steps are as follows: On Monday, we will be calling all parents of students whose social security numbers were exposed to let them know their child was affected, and we will follow up that phone call with a letter. In addition, we will be contacting the national credit bureaus as required by Tennessee law. These companies can place fraud alerts on social security numbers. We are working to locate a security company, and at our expense, we will cover the cost of fraud protection for the students affected. We will share all of this information with our families in the letter that we will send. In addition, we will notify the U.S. Department of Education of this breech. This was a violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

In addition, we will be working on our internal policies and procedures to help prevent an event like this in the future.

Mr. Nugent has resigned his position as Assessment Specialist, effective immediately.