Wyoming’s top educator apologized this week after the Wyoming Department of Education released unredacted student information in a public records request, in violation of the department’s policies.
Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder’s office sent Cowboy State Daily her public apology Wednesday via email.
“The unfortunate release of limited unredacted information was in violation of the Department’s policies and the result of human error,” said Degenfelder in the statement.
She added that the mistake was “quickly identified,” and corrected in the online folder where the department keeps public records request results. The department spoke with the recipients of the files the day after Degenfelder learned of the error, she said.
“I also spoke personally to the family of the student whose information was not redacted,” Degenfelder said, adding that the department personnel involved in the breach “have been appropriately reprimanded and stripped of their duties related to public records.”
She said the Department of Education is revisiting processes and creating a corrective action plan to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
“I apologize for this unfortunate mistake,” said Degenfelder.
‘File Dump’
The error came to light after a member of a group of parents in Sweetwater County School District No. 1 announced publicly that the district had asked the department in a public records request for a substantial amount of parent complaints – and the Wyoming Department of Education responded with what one parent, Cherell O’Driscoll, described as a “huge file dump” which later investigation suggested was “completely unredacted.”
It remains unclear whether the breach also violated the Wyoming Public Records Act. Violating that act carries a civil penalty of up to $750 in fines.
Presented with parts of the act that forbid disclosure of certain confidential information, O’Driscoll said she was unsure if these files matched that description.
She said other parents who may speak to that are reluctant to go on the record; and that around five of the parents in the group have “lawyered up” by enlisting the help of Cheyenne-based attorney Drake Hill. Hill is the spouse of former Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction Cindy Hill.
O’Driscoll noted that other laws, like the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), have privacy restrictions for student protection as well.
She had posted a video on the topic to Facebook on Monday.
“As many of you know, there’s a group of moms, myself included, who have taken on some stuff in our school district, and it’s yucky. It’s been emotional,” began O’Driscoll in the video.
O’Driscoll told Cowboy State Daily in a Wednesday interview that she’s become the parent group’s facilitator as its efforts have grown.
The parents had emailed the Wyoming Department of Education “some questions,” which the department answered by clarifying issues and offering guidance that has “helped us to expose some problems,” said O’Driscoll in her video.
“In the meantime, we were talking to state Superintendent Megan Degenfelder and she told us we’d be protected. We’d have no issues: if the information was ever to be shared, it would be redacted,” she said in the video.
O’Driscoll also said that “we found out” the Sweetwater County School District No. 1 superintendent Joseph Libby requested the files “with the approval of our board.”
The parent group had a parent request the same information the district received.
“Guess what? (We got a) big ol’ file dump. Unredacted – completely unredacted.”
O’Driscoll emphasized that Degenfelder is running for governor, and questioned how Degenfelder will handle issues like these if she becomes governor and the stakes are even higher.
District’s Request
Sweetwater County School District No. 1 Superintendent Joseph Libby confirmed Thursday via email that he submitted the original public records request to WDE “to better understand public statements indicating that the Department had received a significant volume of complaints regarding the District.”
According to a screenshot another parent, Kari Cochran, posted March 9 to a Facebook forum called Sweetwater #1 District Accountability, Libby’s inquiry stemmed from a Feb. 7 Cowboy State Daily story.
That story quoted Degenfelder as saying “We’ve had news and findings in the world of special education, as well as just stacks and stacks of reports and complaints from parents.”
Degenfelder had announced about one week prior that her office was investigating the district’s special education program. That was after Cowboy State Daily reported that a Rock Springs High School teacher accidentally projected a personal nude photo during a special ed class lesson.
The WDE originally anticipated its report on its special monitoring of the school district would become public by the end of March. Cowboy State Daily reached out to WDE spokeswoman Linda Finnerty about that earlier this week, and she said the report is now expected around mid-May.
The outlet asked why more time is needed, and the department had not responded as of Thursday morning.
Libby, in a Feb. 9 records request, asked the WDE to hand over the exact files Degenfelder had cited: “(all) news and findings in the world of special education, as well as just stacks and stacks of reports and complaints from parents,” the screenshot shows.
He asked for an itemized estimate if the records request were to cost more than $1,500.
Once the district learned about the breach, Libby told Cowboy State Daily in his Thursday email, it issued a follow-up records request to determine if unredacted records have reached a member of the public and if so, how that happened.
Libby hinted that the file dump didn’t rise to the “stacks and stacks” descriptor, saying, “Fortunately, the records provided by WDE confirmed that there was not an unusually high number of complaints and that the concerns originated from a limited number of individuals already known to the District.”
Everything in the files the district requested included unredacted student information to some degree, he added. In one instance, the department sent a follow-up file packet with additional redactions but this time again, “not all identifying information was removed.”
The district had no role in compiling those files, and “any unredacted disclosure” started with the state department, not the school district, said Libby.
He also said the district hasn’t distributed those records to others. It’s maintaining them in accordance with student privacy laws like FERPA.
Context, Here
Degenfelder’s statement contains more context about the Wyoming Public Records Act and how under it, agencies “may” redact certain information if disclosure would endanger someone’s life or safety.
She also noted that FERPA and HIPAA require records keepers to redact personally identifiable information when it would violate privacy restrictions under those laws.
A parent’s name, standing alone, is “not necessarily confidential information” but could lead to the student’s identification, she said.
In that case, said Degenfelder, the parent’s name “will be redacted.”
Degenfelder did not say that her office had violated any of those laws, though she conceded it had violated its own policies and apologized for that.
The Wyoming Public Records Act contains a list of information record-keepers aren’t allowed to share. That list includes “School district records containing information relating to the biography, family, physiology, religion, academic achievement and physical or mental ability of any student except to the person in interest or to the officials duly elected and appointed to supervise him.”
O’Driscoll told Cowboy State Daily she’s not sure if the file dump includes breaches covered by that exact language.
It’s unclear whether WDE emails could be classified as “school district records.”
The act also bars the release of individuals’ medical, psychological and sociological data (except on coroners’ dockets), individuals’ adoption and welfare records, personnel files generally, hospital records generally, and library patron transactions – to name a few.
‘Retaliation’
O’Driscoll said in her video that the parent group’s “loud voice” advocacy has brought “some massive retaliation. We’ve all been affected. It sucks. But keep asking questions, people.”
She told Cowboy State Daily in her Wednesday interview that as of that day, no one had suffered retaliation over the file dump issue, “but there’s been other stuff previously that’s (brought) retaliation within our district. So for us, hearing our superintendent was requesting this information made us wonder why, and who he’s going to share it with.”
Degenfelder said her department will use all its available power to protect parents, students, and whistleblowers as it pertains to concerns of retaliation.
Libby said the district is seeking more information from WDE so it can understand the file-dump situation better and “ensure that student confidentiality is appropriately protected.”
A former SCSD1 board member, Cole Seppie, has filed a retaliation complaint against the district’s special services director, he told Cowboy State Daily earlier this year.
Seppie was elected in 2024.
In February 2025, a staff member made an anonymous complaint accusing Seppie of bullying behavior, Seppie told the outlet roughly one year later.
Investigators concluded that Seppie’s actions exposed the district to legal and reputational risk, while Seppie in turn, has asserted that ulterior motives drove the investigations against him, and that the board retaliated against him for his wife’s outspoken advocacy in the district and complaints she made against it prior to his time on the board.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
