By Associated Press
Hazel Green, AL – Madison County school officials are investigating how students' records wound up in a trash pile between Hazel Green's elementary and high schools. Two students who went through the trash piles found boxes of student records, which included photographs, addresses, grades and Social Security numbers of sixth-graders from 2003 through 2005. Sandra Leach says her son found the records Tuesday while collecting textbooks that also had been thrown out. She says personal information on students should be shredded or burned. School system personnel director Jim Nash said the system doesn't dispose of information by throwing it in the trash. He's investigating how it happened. He said some volunteers had cleaned out a room and apparently put the boxes out on a trash pile. Nash says the papers weren't permanent records, but so-called grade verification sheets that teachers review to make sure the grades are correct before they're entered into the computer for report cards.