BAY VILLAGE, Ohio — Personal information for the entire Bay Village High School senior class, including grades, student ID numbers and test scores, was accidentally emailed to the families of each senior last week, according to a notice sent to families in the district.
At about 8:53 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 23, a Bay High School employee intended to send seniors and their parents a copy of their respective, individual transcripts via email, the district states in the letter to parents sent last week. The emails sent to families accidentally included incomplete transcripts of all members of the school’s senior class. These documents contained students’ names, addresses, phone numbers, grades, permanent student ID numbers, state test scores and college readiness test scores.
The district said that no social security numbers, financial, special education plan information, discipline information, medical or insurance information were contained in the emails.
“The District has not experienced a breach of its technology infrastructure or systems,” Interim Superintendent Char Shryock stated in the letter to parents. “This data breach was a result of human error.”
As a result, the district immediately notified the students and parents directly affected by the mistake and is working with them to reset their Google Mail passwords to prevent further unauthorized access. The district is also working with the Food Service Supervisor to ensure that lunch account access is still secure.
The district has also directed everyone in possession of the erroneously-released documents to delete and/or destroy them immediately. Students have been told that disclosing the information in these documents violates the Student Code of Conduct and will subject them to discipline.
The district is making their Care Coordinator Megan Basel available for any student that needs additional support. She can be reached at megan.basel@bayschoolsohio.org.
The district is also notifying the Ohio Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Education’s Student Privacy Policy Office of the disclosure, and will be conducting an evaluation of the district’s records policies and data protection measures to prevent this from happening in the future.
The superintendent said that anyone who sees any of the disclosed information being redistributed should contact the district so they can respond accordingly.
“I sincerely apologize to those students and families affected by this failure and want to assure you that immediate corrective actions were taken to ensure this never happens again,” Shryock stated.
Download the News 5 Cleveland app now for more stories from us, plus alerts on major news, the latest weather forecast, traffic information and much more. Download now on your Apple device here, and your Android device here.
You can also catch News 5 Cleveland on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, YouTube TV, DIRECTV NOW, Hulu Live and more. We're also on Amazon Alexa devices. Learn more about our streaming options here.
