WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- The Palm Beach County School District says it accidentally transmitted the Social Security numbers of approximately 5,800 teachers to a District vendor.
Superintendent Robert Avossa says employees were alerted on Friday.
Though notifying the affected teachers is not required by state law, Dr. Avossa said it was important to communicate directly with teachers.
"When we make a mistake, we need to take responsibility and be transparent about what we're doing to correct it," Dr. Avossa said. "We alerted teachers to the error, and are taking corrective action to ensure this does not happen again."
The confidential information was inadvertently included in a file sent to an outside contractor, Educational Resource Strategies (ERS), as part of an ongoing budget review, according to the School District.
ERS says they took all necessary steps to purge the data from their system, ensuring it was not stored on any backup. The company provided the School District with an affidavit affirming the steps they took, including confirmation that the data was not used for any purpose or transmitted.
The District says they are changing their policies and procedures to strengthen their protection of confidential employee information.