LEANDER, Texas — Some Leander ISD parents are frustrated after the district exposed the medical records of a number of students – and it isn't the first time it’s happened.
Leander ISD parent Jeremy Gryder was told by his middle schooler that during lunch on Tuesday, the vice principal of Danielson Middle School put up a list on a projector screen with the names of about 30 students who hadn't received all their vaccinations.
Gryder’s son was one of the students who had his name publicly called out to get a letter to give to his parents.
“If, you know, they have a problem or whatever, let’s work together. But you have to come to me first,” Gryder said. “You don’t need to go to my kid and embarrass him and point him out to other folks.”
Gryder said the school notified him of his son's vaccination status through an app called Remind, which the district uses to send notifications to parents. But with three other kids, he missed the notification.
Gryder thinks the school should have tried to contact him before publicly sharing his son's information.
“We’re not anti-vax or anything, we just don’t want our kids’ privacy exposed like that,” Gryder said.
He also said the public nature of the callout led to other kids bullying the ones who got called up about their vaccination status.
“This was ultimately what they decided was best, and it obviously wasn’t,” Gryder said. “It was an infringement of the privacy of the students.”
On Tuesday, the district emailed a letter to parents who were affected by the incident. In the letter, Leander ISD apologized for how it went about updating the vaccination records, saying, “While the desire was to communicate in an efficient manner, administration quickly realized the misstep and removed the information.”
The letter went on to say that the district is taking steps to review its internal processes to make sure an incident like this doesn’t happen again. The entire letter can be read here.
But for Leander ISD parents, the letter didn’t reassure them much because it’s is an all too familiar tune they’ve heard before.
In September 2023, the district came under fire for accidentally exposing students’ vaccination statuses by forgetting to blind copy email recipients on a large email chain. After that incident, the district said it would review its internal process to make sure a similar incident didn't happen again.
Gryder posted about what happened in a Leander ISD parent Facebook group, and many parents are now also hoping the district will make more changes to protect student privacy.
“It seems like they haven’t really thought through how to take care of privacy issues, you know," Gryder said. "And to me, when it comes down to putting kids in a bad situation, that’s when I get upset."