(Photo by Mr.TinDC)

Around 2,000 homeless students at D.C. public schools had their personal information mistakenly posted online for six months, school officials have confirmed. FOX 5 was the first to report on the information leak.

The information was provided to At-large Councilmember David Grosso’s office in response to questions posed at a performance oversight hearing. Grosso is the chair of the education committee. He said that schools officials should never have provided his office with the spreadsheet of information, which was posted on his website, reports the Associated Press.

In a letter to parents on Friday, Interim DCPS Chancellor Amanda Alexander wrote that “DCPS mistakenly included the student information in a spreadsheet it provided to the Council.”

The spreadsheet contained students’ names, dates of birth, ID numbers, schools, grade level, attendance information, housing status, and eligibility for special education and/or English Language Learner classes, according to Alexander’s letter.

The information was posted on Grosso’s site from February 5, 2018 to August 9, 2018. A student noticed the information early last month. Grosso removed it and told school officials right away, according to the AP.

“DCPS takes the safety and security of all student data seriously. Immediately after learning of the unauthorized disclosure, we began developing a plan to notify all affected families,” DCPS said in an emailed statement. “Moving forward, DCPS will ensure that our personnel are fully aware of proper protocols around sensitive information so that the privacy of our students and families is always protected.”

The agency says information about whether and how the information has been accessed is unavailable at this time.

This isn’t the first time DCPS has come under fire for exposing sensitive student information. Back in 2015, the agency’s intranet was discovered to be unintentionally public, exposing information about students and teachers to anyone who stumbled upon it via Google search.