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Notes: ACPS vendor accidentally leaks confidential student information

Good Friday morning, Alexandria!

🌤 Today’s weather: Clear throughout the day. High of 42 and low of 33.
⛅ Tomorrow: Partly cloudy throughout the day. High of 52 and low of 33. Sunrise at 7:19 am and sunset at 5:25 pm.

🚨 You need to know

Earlier this week, Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS) sent out an alert to parents saying that confidential student contact information was made temporarily accessible by a vendor, ACPS said in a message to parents.

The vendor handled BlackBoard Connect services and, while the contract ended last June, months later the vendor made family email addresses, phone numbers, student grade levels, gender and local identifiers public.

“This disclosure came as a surprise to us since our relationship with the vendor ended for BlackBoard Connect services on June 30, 2022, and we had been assured by that vendor that all data and access to our information would be disconnected,” ACPS said in the message. “At our request, this information was removed from public access immediately and the vendor, FinalSite (now the owner of BlackBoard), conducted an investigation to determine how this happened, the information involved and whether the data had been accessed.”

ACPS said a report from the vendor said the information was made public by mistake by an engineer.

According to the release:

We are dismayed and disappointed to learn that this ACPS student information was temporarily made publicly available by our vendor, as we recognize the importance of keeping student information private, per Board Policy JRCA.

We apologize for this incident and will continue working closely with all ACPS vendors whose systems contain student data. We take our role protecting student information seriously and are committed to ensuring that our vendors take all necessary steps to enhance their protection of student data as well.

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