By Howard Fischer
Mail | Twitter: @azcapmedia

PHOENIX — A data breach that allowed a parent to see information about other parents getting vouchers can be traced back to the actions of a now-resigned employee of the state Department of Education, according to a new report.

The state Department of Homeland Security said there was an “email chain” between an unnamed employee at the agency and the parent in late June regarding an order the parent had placed for some items or services for the child through ClassWallet, the private firm hired by the state handling such requests.

State schools chief Tom Horne confirmed for Capitol Media Services that employee, who resigned a week ago, was Christine Accurso whom he had hired to run the voucher program.

According to the report, Accurso said she had looked up the parent’s order and noticed it actually had been assigned to her and not the parent.

All that led to the parent getting “elevated user permissions” allowing access to everyone else in the approval queue. Accurso’s account was then used to access ClassWallet to conduct a search for the student’s account and view the details including permissions.

But it was not the Department of Education that reported the problem of the data breach but the state Treasurer’s Office, which handles the actual disbursements. And that occurred only after the Yellow Sheet, a separate publication of the Arizona Capitol Times, reported a claim by a parent whose child is a voucher recipient that she was able to access thousands of purchases from other parents in the program through her ClassWallet account.

On July 24, three days after the probe began, Accurso abruptly resigned.

In a statement to the media, Accurso did not cite a reason, saying instead that “it is time to move on and pursue other opportunities to engage citizens, especially parents, to fight for school choice and other issues they believe in for the future our our state.”

A spokesman for Horne said he is legally precluded from providing a copy of her actual resignation letter.

But the schools chief, in a statement Tuesday, said he did not know until the report of Accurso’s involvement in the breach.

“The Arizona Department of Education has no way to know the reason for the resignation of Christine Accurso other than her own statements in her letter of resignation,” he said. “The department did not request this resignation; it was initiated by the former employee.”

And Horne pointed out she resigned before the investigation was completed.

What the parent could access, according to Homeland Security, was the full name of the each student and parent, the email of the person placing the order, home shipping address, amount spent per order, items purchased per order and the phone number of that person. But the report said having that information could tell someone with unauthorized access a lot more.

“The application type could be used to infer that the student may have a learning disability,” the report states.

In an earlier statement, Jamie Rosenburg, CEO of ClassWallet, said the problem had been solved.

“It was a permission setting error,” he said. “Once discovered, we took immediate action and corrected the permission setting.”

And Rosenburg said a search of the database concluded no other users were affected, calling it “an isolated incident to a single user.”

The issue of the voucher program and how it is run has taken on new importance since the decision last year by the Republican-controlled Legislature to make vouchers of public funds available to any student to attend private or parochial schools or for home schooling. Until then, these funds had been available only to certain students, such as those with special needs, foster care children and youngsters attending schools rated D or F.

The result has been a sharp increase in the number of those asking for what are formally known as “empowerment scholarship accounts” of about $7,200 a year, with some predictions that the total enrollment, which had been around 12,000 before the restrictions were lifted, could balloon to close to 100,000. And much of that increase has been in students who already were enrolled in private schools at parental expense.

Horne, elected last year as superintendent of public instruction, has been a big supporter of vouchers.

That was reflected in his hiring of Accurso who promoted universal vouchers, even to the point of discouraging voters last year from signing petitions that would have put the question of expansion on the ballot.

At the time of her resignation, agency spokesman Doug Nick praised her.

“She worked tirelessly managing the ... operation during a period of unprecedented growth and confronted the various challenges that accompany the transition from a limited program to one available to all Arizona parents,” Nick said.

On Tuesday, Horne defended hiring her.

“She has, in fact, cleaned up an unbelievable mess,” he said.

“There were 170,000 bills that hadn’t been paid,” Horne said. “There were bills, unpaid, going back to June, not of 2022 but of 2021.”

That was when the department was being run by Democrat Kathy Hoffman, whom Horne defeated last year.

“And now they’re being paid within a reasonable period of time,” he said.