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On November 10, 2025 we contributed an opinion letter to Sudbury Weekly explaining a breach of student privacy made by Sudbury Public Schools (SPS) when they gave poorly redacted documents to the Boston Globe that were published in November 2024. For many months we had sought an explanation of what the SPS administration was doing to remedy that breach, and what action was being taken to prevent such a breach from happening again.
Following the publication of our letter we attended SPS School Committee meetings and used public comment repeatedly to request the assistance of the school committee in obtaining those explanations. We are pleased to report that on December 15, 2025, thirteen months after the incident, we received an email from Superintendent Crozier.
In it he states:
Consistent with state and federal laws, School Committee policy governs the protection of student records and student privacy, and the District takes its responsibility to implement this policy seriously. Unfortunately, in 2023, incomplete redactions of a limited number of records were provided to a third party in response to a public record request. The District corrected this promptly, and district procedures have been reviewed and strengthened to ensure consistent and careful application to protect student record information.
He goes on later to state:
All Public Records Requests are now formally processed through the Records Access Officer (RAO). Student records are compiled by the RAO and are reviewed and redacted using professional software, with oversight from District counsel, to ensure compliance with applicable laws and privacy standards.
The Superintendent’s communication provides an account of the administration’s intent, their error, and the remedial actions put in place to implement best practice. It would have been ideal for this communication to have been delivered to the school community in November 2024, but in lieu of that, it is helpful to have it now.
We wonder if anyone in the administration has taken the step to offer an apology to the families that were directly affected. That kind of accountability and respect would be a sign of strong educational leadership.
Kay Bell and Maia Proujansky-Bell