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CEDAR PARK, Texas — Some Leander ISD parents are upset after they say the district shared students' private vaccine information.
Cedar Park Middle School sent out an email to 207 parents earlier this week, requesting updated vaccine records. But without blind coping the email addresses, every address on the email was visible to all the recipients.
“It was so clearly a violation of people’s privacy and personal data,” said Michelle Evans, political director for Texans for Vaccine Choice.
The email requested an updated immunization record for those students because they were missing the Tdap and Meningococcal vaccinations. It also said that if the district did not receive those records by Oct. 13, the students would not be allowed to return to school or participate in school activities.
“You were also getting not just the personal email addresses of others in your community, but you're getting the small nugget of information that has huge implications, which is this child, or this family, opts not to vaccinate, potentially, or they are lagging in their vaccination records,” Evans said.
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A few days after the initial email was sent out, the district sent an apology email, saying that the first email sent out by the Cedar Park Middle School nurse “was accidentally delivered in a way that made all recipient email addresses visible.”
“We want to assure you that no student records themselves were shared, but we acknowledge and apologize for how the email was distributed and the resulting contact information that was made available," the district said.
Leander ISD said it is working on reviewing and improving its internal processes so an incident like this doesn’t happen again. But some people think the district should handle personal information another way.
“This type of private medical information, I think, should be handled on a one-on-one basis, either sending a letter to the parent or giving, doing a basic phone call,” Evans said. “That way, you are not potentially making these huge errors in data breach.”
Evans also said some parents who contacted Texans for Vaccine Choice were upset the initial email didn’t send an exemption form or information on how to apply for an exemption. In her words, “it was basically just vaccinate or leave."
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