Mental health records belonging to middle schoolers in Seattle Public Schools exposed

Update: here's a link to my post on the Seattle Times story. Here's a link to the 2022 Times' story.

end of update

 

Members of the community have been investigating the release and exposure of sensitive student psychological and mental health records to third parties by Seattle Public Schools. If your child took a middle school mental health assessment called Check Yourself between 2018-2024, their records may have been included in the batches released.

These are not anonymized records. This was not an anonymous survey — it was an identifiable Assessment Test that scores the child and “triages” them according to internal documentation. Internal documentation also refers to these student records as “PHI” (Protected Health Information) containing “PII” (Personally Identifiable Information). Normally PHI/PII health records are protected by HIPAA, yet these are not ؅— which is how we could gain copies of them as a test to prove they are unprotected.

 

Included above is a picture of a small section of the students’ health records which have been purposely obscured and minimized so that no student personally identifiable information is viewable to the public. 

Included within the records we can see are:

- Student answers to every question on the psychological assessment

- Many of the answers are write-in fields and we can see Seattle students wrote in many details about what is going on for them inside their home and with their family members (example: “my parents arguing with my brother…”; “there is arguing between my sister and parents or my parents…”; “i skip meals only because of my medication i take to help my adhd…"

Many typed in what they felt about taking the assessment test: 

“why did we have to do it?”
“i hated it”
“i never want to do this ever again”
‘why do you ask so many weird questions”
“deez nuts”

 We can see within the records responses to questions by the students ages 11, 12 and 13 on very personal information, such as:

- Who do you want to date more than a friend? (write it in)
- Who do you have a crush on? (write it in)
- Have your family members spent time in jail?
- Are you questioning your gender?
- Write in what you experience at home (write it in)
- Drugs you are taking (write it in)

- Suicide ideation; Depression; Eating disorders; Partner violence; Family members arguing at home; Animal cruelty activities; and more

All of this and more is included in the copies of the above student records. 

Seattle Public Schools wrote on a form to us that these records contain “Personal information contained in a file maintained for student in a public school” and that they contain  “identifying information that is directly related to a student and maintained by a school.”

SPS signed a data-sharing agreement to third parties to release these student health records to the requestors in exchange for grants in the range of $3 million. 

Parents were not informed that their children’s assessment records, their intervention notes and records from the assessment would be tied to their personally identifiable information and released outside of the school for any purpose. 

If you think your child may have been tested using the Check Yourself assessment, and you would like to talk to someone about these records that have been released please email me at

sss.westbrook@gmail.com for more information.