“Megan Degenfelder Apologizes For ‘Unredacted’ Student Info Release,” the outlet declared, wrapping the mess in the soft language of “human error,” reprimands, and regret. The frame was simple; a mistake happened, Megan apologized, staff got disciplined. Everybody move along.
That may be convenient in politics, but it is not the whole story. One apology to one family does not answer whether other households were exposed, and whether other affected households were contacted, or whether the Wyoming Department of Education’s timeline is as neat and prompt as the public has been led to believe.
In the response sent through Degenfelder’s office to The Open Range Record, WDE said the release of “limited unredacted information” violated department policy. It was the result of “human error,” was “quickly identified,” and was corrected in the online folder containing the produced documents. The office also said Degenfelder personally spoke “to the family of the student whose information was not redacted.”
That wording makes the problem sound narrow, and the response immediate. It makes the apology sound sufficient. But the paper trail and the timeline do not match that version of events.
The Request that Anticipated Redactions
Superintendent Joseph Libby said he submitted his first public-records request to WDE on Feb. 9 after Megan Degenfelder publicly claimed there were “stacks and stacks of reports and complaints from parents” involving Sweetwater County School District No. 1. His request was broad, but it did not ask WDE to throw privacy law out the window.
Libby specifically wrote that if any part of the request was denied, WDE should identify the records withheld or category of records withheld, give the legal basis for withholding, identify the person responsible for the denial, and release any reasonably segregable portions with redactions. In other words, the request itself recognized that some material might need to be withheld or carefully redacted. Click Here for Dr. Libby's initial FOIA Request
That blows a hole in any excuse that WDE somehow had no choice but to dump sensitive information out the door. The request itself anticipated withholding and redaction. If unredacted material still went out, that was not because the requester told WDE to ignore confidentiality. It was because somebody inside WDE failed to do what the request plainly asked for.
The Timeline Does Not Sit Right
The public timeline gets even worse for the apology narrative on March 4. That day, Cowboy State Daily reported that Libby had sought records backing up Degenfelder’s public “stacks and stacks” claim. And in the same story, the paper reported, “Finnerty told Cowboy State Daily she shared those records with the school district this week.”
The phrase “this week” in a Wednesday story, strongly suggests WDE had already produced records to Sweetwater County School District No. 1 by Monday, March 2, or Tuesday, March 3. Libby has now said directly that WDE provided the district an initial production on March 2. Then, on March 4, a parent submitted her own public-records request for the same material. Two days later, on March 6, she received the file. Libby also says WDE sent a supplemental production to the district on March 6.
According to sources who spoke to The Open Range Record and were granted anonymity for this story, the problem was obvious immediately: the file contained unredacted information. Those sources told The Open Range Record that when Degenfelder was informed on March 6 that the records had already been released and were not properly redacted, she initially responded that they had not been released yet. According to those sources, she was then told they had in fact already gone out, because the recipients were looking at them in real time.
If that account is accurate, then WDE’s later public language about the problem being “quickly identified” starts to look less like a documented fact and more like a clean and polished line after the damage was already done.
March 8 and the Oversight Problem
On March 8, The Open Range Record reviewed an email attributed to Degenfelder in which she wrote that she was receiving “many concerned calls from parents in Rock Springs” regarding information released in response to the district’s public-records request, including “a child’s identifiable information,” a child’s birthday, particular disabilities and IEPs. In that same email, she asked staff what the Public Records Act required WDE to disclose and whether interviews connected to the SPED investigation were confidential.
“How under [sic] public records act are we forced to share children’s information? What all are we compelled to share when it deals with personal information?”
That email creates a problem for Degenfelder that no apology statement can mop up. If she was still asking on March 8 what should have been withheld, what had to be redacted, and whether certain investigative materials were confidential, then how did this later become a story about disciplining staff instead of a story about leadership failure?
Either she was closely involved in a politically sensitive records matter and still did not understand what had already gone out, or she was so detached from it that her office released confidential information without her knowledge that the records were out. Neither version flatters her. Both point back to her.
As The Open Range Record previously reported, On March 9, according to the
timeline now assembled, WDE followed up with the parent asking for a phone
number because a mistake had been made. On March 11, Libby submitted a
second public-records request to WDE.
Libby’s Answers Make WDE Look Worse
The Open Range Record contacted Dr. Libby a second time to confirm the timeline of his requests. His response makes the WDE’s actions look a lot worse.
In his April 1 response, Libby said WDE provided an initial production and then a subsequent production, and that some of the documents included unredacted student names or other identifying student information. He also said the district did not release those records to the board or the public because of privacy concerns.
Now Libby has clarified the dates: WDE sent an initial production on March 2 and a supplemental production on March 6. He says the district did not notify WDE regarding the presence of student personally identifiable information because, as the local education agency, the district was authorized under FERPA to access information concerning its own students. In Libby’s telling, the district did not view receipt of those records, by itself, as a FERPA violation.
But Libby added something else that broadens the story. He said the March 6 disclosures from WDE also included attorney-client privileged information. On March 11, legal counsel for the district contacted the assistant attorney general working with WDE to report that privileged materials had been included. Libby said the district agreed not to use or further review those privileged materials. Click Here for Dr. Libby's full response to The Open Range Record.
Degenfelder’s office not only disclosed sensitive and confidential student and parent information, but documents previously covered by attorney-client privilege. Libby also says the district did not have any indication at the time the records were received that similar materials may have been provided to people outside the district. According to his email,
“The District was not aware that WDE had released these records to a member of the public until the public comment portion of the Board’s March meeting.”
Then, in his earlier follow-up response, Libby got more specific about the records themselves. He said all productions provided by WDE in response to the district’s requests included unredacted student information “to some degree.” He also said that in one instance, WDE later sent additional redactions, “though not all student-identifying information was removed.” He further said the records reflected eight identifiable complainants, made up of parents and former employees.
None of this was as neatly cleaned up as the WDE statement or the CSD account made it out to be. According to Libby’s account, even the follow-up production was still not correctly redacted.
The Apology and the Households Left Hanging
WDE’s public statement, amplified by Cowboy State Daily, centered on a singular apology to “the family of the student whose information was not redacted.” But a review of public social-media statements shows the exposure may have been broader. One household has publicly indicated that Degenfelder contacted them and apologized. Click Here for full response from Degenfelder.
In the same public thread, three other parents said their information also appeared in the records and had not been properly redacted. The Open Range Record is continuing to verify the full number of affected households and individuals, including whether additional private notifications were made outside public view.
Another parent, Crystal Walker, called in to Cowboy State Politics Live on April 3 and told David Iverson that her family’s information absolutely is included in the document release and that she has not spoken to Megan Degenfelder, or anyone else at the Wyoming Department of Education, concerning the unredacted documents. And, she said, she has not received an “apology” from Degenfelder.
Walker went on to tell Iverson that her complaint is about an alleged Title IX violation of her child’s rights.
A Title IX violation occurs when an educational institution receiving federal funds fails to protect students or employees from discrimination based on sex, including sexual harassment, sexual violence, sexual assault, and inequitable treatment in athletic or academic programs.
Libby’s follow-up and the interview on Cowboy State Politics show that this is not, and never was, about whether Degenfelder apologized or not. It is, however, about a complete breakdown, top to bottom, in handling of the document release.
If multiple households were exposed, and not all of them received a personal apology; and if the document release was not limited, as the WDE statement claimed, then Cowboy State Daily’s headline did not merely simplify the story, it sanitized it.
A Bit About Money
Cowboy State Daily has been owned by B. Wayne Hughes Jr. since he purchased the outlet effective Feb. 1, 2022. Hughes has donated $582,640.00 to the political action committee Wyoming Hope since 2021.
According to the Wyoming Campaign Finance Information System, Wyoming Hope then gave Degenfelder, as a candidate for Superintendent of Public Instruction $10,000 on June 8, 2022, $85,000 on Aug. 22, 2022, and then, after she was elected, another $10,000 on Jan. 20, 2023, for a total of $105,000.
The Larger Failure
The deeper problem for Degenfelder is not just that bad records went out. It is that the timeline suggests she did not even know they had gone out when parents were already looking at them. If she knew about the public-records request back in February, but by March 6 still had to be told that the documents had already been released unredacted, then this was not just a staff failure. It was a failure of oversight.
And if she was still trying to sort out the legal basics on March 8, then blaming subordinates afterward does not erase the larger issue. The public statement issued by the WDE leaves out affected families, and at least one of them has not, as of April 3, even spoken to anyone from Degenfelder’s office.
This was never just about one bad release, one embarrassed office, or one public-relations statement sent to reporters. It was about parents, students and staff whose information was exposed while the adults running the system were still trying to figure out who knew what and when.