NewsChannel 5.com - Nashville, Tennessee - Student Information Mistakenly Released Online

Student Information Mistakenly Released Online

FRANKLIN, Tenn. - Williamson County parents wonder how personal information of possibly thousands of students was released on the Internet.

Williamson County Schools acted quickly and sent a phone message home to parents as soon as the security breach was discovered.

Initially, school district officials thought it affected the households of third to eighth graders, but on Thursday they said it may be district wide.

Apparently, the information was placed on the Web by mistake. But that doesn't ease the concerns of parents who fear their child's identity could be stolen.

"It makes you wonder how secure is the school system to begin with?" said Rebecca Fowler.

She said she can't believe the breach happened.

"And I am going on the assumption that they just found this out," she said. "I hope that's the case and they haven't been sitting on this for awhile.

She said she is worries that her children's personal information is floating in cyberspace.

"It's one thing when an adult has their identity stolen, but when a child has it stolen how are you going to be alerted to that?" she said.

Fowler's not alone.

Parents across the county have major concerns after getting word from the local school district that student Social Security numbers have been placed on the Internet.

A district employee working on a graduate degree accessed the information for a project. The information was then mistakenly placed on a personal Web page.

Parents such as Jennifer McClellan can't understand why the information was readily available.

"I think that's important to know so that they can keep it from happening again in the future," she said.

Parents such as McClellan believe the district needs to come up with a few more answers.

"Maybe it was just an honest mistake but either way we need to know how it happened," she said

"Will it happen again? What are they going to do to keep it from happening again? I hope that they disclose that when they come back with the additional information that they promised on the messages they sent out," Fowler said.

Parents were alerted they would get that additional information next week. The district is still investigating how the employee got the information.

It was a security company that informed district administrators about the information was taken.

The director of the school district declined comment about whether the employee would be disciplined.

She said will hold a press conference on Friday to release more information on the case.