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Prince William County schools mistakenly shared student and parent personal information with Hazel Health, a third-party partner of the school division.
The division on Dec. 19 sent a notification to the affected families notifying them that on Dec. 16 Hazel Health inadvertently sent a welcome text to families who had not opted into the provider’s service.
Hazel Health is the division’s contracted provider of mental telehealth services to students at no cost to families.
Following the mistaken welcome text, the school system discovered it had “unintentionally disclosed” personal identifiable information for those who had not opted into the service, the division said in its statement to the affected families.
The disclosed information included the following parent contact details: name, mobile phone number, email address, physical address, guardian status, relationship to the student and contact order preference.
Student information included: student ID, district ID, state testing ID, name, gender, birth date, grade level and details related to the child’s school including school code, school name and school address.
As soon as the incident was discovered, the school system “took immediate steps to ensure Hazel Health destroyed the information,” according to the school system’s notification.
“Hazel Health is an approved vendor of PWCS and has met the division’s standards for data security,” the division said. “PWCS has corrected the data file to prevent this error in the future and updated internal processes to prevent similar incidents in the future.”
The school system was unable to provide further information due to most employees being on leave for winter break.
Parent reacts
One parent in the school division, Rochelle, told InsideNoVa she was among the parents who received a text message from Hazel Health despite not enrolling her two children in the service.
Rochelle, who did not want to publicly disclose her last name for fear of retribution by the school system, said she and her husband chose not to enroll their children in the Hazel Health services because she trusted her children to come to them if they needed help.
The opt-out process, she said, was complicated. In the back-to-school packet, parents had the option to opt-in to a number of programs, including the Hazel Health service.
