After two high-level resignations within the Arizona Department of Education’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program, Governor Hobbs is calling for Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne to release his department’s plan to address a recent ESA data breach.
According to the governor’s office, ClassWalletthe third-party vendor that handles funds for ESA, the recently-expanded school voucher programrecently experienced a significant data breach.
KGUN 9 has reached out to the governor’s office for additional details on the ClassWallet data breach, which Hobbs says in a letter to Horne compromised “thousands of personal information data points, including student names and disability categories.” Hobbs says the Arizona Department of Homeland Security’s State Incident Response Team is reviewing the breach.
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In the letter dated Friday, July 28 Hobbs asks Horne to provide a written report by Thursday, Aug. 3 detailing his current and next steps for addressing the data breach, including how his administration plans to address potential violations of state law on student data privacy.
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Horne’s office says they are preparing a response, and have passed along a statement from ClassWallet CEO Jamie Rosenburg. Horne says his department received the following statement July 14:
The problem has been solved. It was a permission setting error. Once discovered, we (ClassWallet) took immediate action and corrected the permission setting. Additionally, we performed a database search and concluded no other users were affected. Therefore, this is an isolated incident to a single user.
Hobbs says ESA Program Director Christine Accurso and ESA program administrator Linda Rizzo both resigned their positions earlier this week, just as the first academic year after the state’s universal ESA expansion is beginning.