A disk holding the social security numbers of every student in the Laredo Independent School District — a total of 24,903 — has gone missing, according to the Texas Education Agency.
TEA Spokeswoman Suzanne Marchman said the agency first became aware of the situation in January, when officials with the University of Texas at Dallas' Education Research Center contacted the TEA looking for sensitive data they had requested from Laredo ISD — data that was supposed to be sent to the TEA first.
At that point, the TEA contacted Laredo ISD for the package tracking number, only to learn that the CD had been signed for at the William B. Travis building in Austin — which houses five state government agencies including the TEA. But the CD was never delivered to James Van Overschelde, the TEA's former director of educational research and policy who was working with UT-D on the project — and the agency doesn't know who signed for it.
Marchman said it's not "typical protocol" for a school district to transmit confidential data through the mail, adding that UT-D should not have been requesting social security numbers in the first place. She said the TEA, which, along with the Higher Education Coordinating Board, reviews ERC projects using confidential data, never approved the project. Overschelde no longer works at the agency, and Marchmann said she did not know the circumstances of his departure.
"Basically this was going on without our knowlege," she said.
In an e-mail to The Texas Tribune on Tuesday, UT-D Spokesman John Walls wrote that the university "became aware in February that an affiliated researcher of the ERC had requested that data be sent from the Laredo ISD to the TEA, and that diskette could not be found." Walls said when ERC officials contacted Laredo ISD, they were told "their standard policy would be for the diskette to be encrypted, so there was no concern of a security breach."
But Veronica Castillon, Laredo ISD's spokeswoman, said Tuesday that this was the first the district had heard of the lapse. She said the district is trying, with the help of the TEA, to gather all of the facts before commenting on case.
George Beckelhymer, president of Laredo ISD's Board of Trustees, said he was also unaware that the information had gone missing.
"I am trying to be sure we are looking in the right spot if we are looking for blame on this," he said. "Is it really LISD’s blame? Did UT-D use an inappropriate method to request the [information] and then tricked us? Does the TEA have fault that they didn’t have the proper personnel to sign legitimately?"
Beckelhymer also added that, while he doesn't like "sharing" social security numbers, he doesn't think the fact that they're missing is "a big deal."
