Six of eight attending Lehighton Area School District board members voted Tuesday night to formally condemn appointed director David Bradley for publicly posting unredacted district records online, exposing Social Security numbers and other confidential information of current and former employees and students.

The resolution, adopted 6-2 at the board’s regular May meeting with Bradley and Director Jeremy Glaush dissenting, calls for Bradley’s immediate resignation, demands he reimburse the district for all costs arising from the breach and bars him from executive sessions in which legal counsel discusses matters related to the incident. The board also directed its solicitor and any special counsel to pursue all available legal remedies, including referral to law enforcement, requests for injunctive relief and recovery of damages.

Former employee

speaks out

“What was taken from the victims of this breach can never truly be restored,” said Abby Guardiani, who is retired after 35 years as a nurse in the district. “The exposure of personal and confidential information has caused permanent and irreparable harm, the full scope of which may not even be known yet.”

Guardiani said she saw her own name and Social Security number publicly posted on Bradley’s website on May 13, alongside the confidential records of 19 other current and former employees — all on a single page. She addressed Bradley directly, who attended the meeting remotely.

“Your actions were not accidental,” Guardiani said. “They were a choice, a reckless and profoundly poor choice.”

The breach traces to a sprawling Right-to-Know Law request Bradley filed for district financial records. A decision by the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records, which was followed by a December 2024 Court of Common Pleas ruling, required the district to produce the records. Bradley and members of his team then uploaded the documents to a website, lehightongovt.org, without reviewing them for sensitive content. The documents are no longer publicly accessible on the site.

Bradley was appointed to the board in November 2025 on a 5-3 vote. Joy Beers, one of the directors who voted to appoint Bradley, was absent from Tuesday’s meeting and did not vote on the condemnation resolution.

‘Not intentional’

Bradley, during Tuesday’s meeting, denied intentional wrongdoing.

“I did not knowingly release any such information,” Bradley said. “I had no indication that the district was not going to go through these documents with a fine-tooth comb. All I asked for was the financial books of the district.”

Bradley suggested the district bore responsibility for failing to properly redact the records before turning them over.

“Did the district know that they have a responsibility under the law to redact Social Security numbers?” he said. He added that he believed the records he sought were relevant to findings of noncompliance identified in a prior Auditor General’s report, and said his team moved to take down the site and cooperated once the problem was discovered.

The resolution adopted by the board left no room for such explanations. The board found Bradley’s conduct “fundamentally inconsistent with the standards of trust, judgment, and fidelity expected of a public official of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” and declared it “willful misconduct and a dereliction of his duties as a member of the Board of School Directors.”

Beyond his resignation, the board formally demanded that Bradley identify every website, platform and account to which he uploaded or transmitted the records and cooperate fully with the district’s remediation efforts; including handing over a complete digital copy of the files he uploaded so a third party can determine exactly whose information was exposed.

The resolution also calls on Bradley to publicly apologize to the current and former employees and students whose information was exposed, to their families, to the district administration that has been forced to divert time and resources away from educating students, to board members whose trust he betrayed, and to the community.

Question on information

Superintendent Jason Moser told the board that identifying exactly whose information was exposed remains difficult.

“We are doing our best to notify individuals as we can confirm,” Moser said. “The challenge we have is that it is difficult for us to confirm exactly whose information was out there, because we can’t compare against the documents that were loaded.” He said the district has formally requested a complete digital copy of the files Bradley uploaded so a third party could cross-reference them against the original unredacted records — a request, he said, that had not yet been fulfilled.

Director Denise Hartley, who voted to approve the resolution, described her vote as a difficult but necessary one.

“The idea of condemning anyone is very hard, but I also feel that his actions need to be addressed, and this is the first step to addressing them,” Hartley said. “As much as I don’t like the word, I think we have to address it.”

Rush to judgment?

Glaush, who voted against the resolution, said his concern was with what he saw as an incomplete factual record and a rush to judgment.

“They’re having us vote on something that has a lot of what ifs,” Glaush said during deliberations. “You’re telling us that he did this on purpose. The fact of the matter is that’s what you’re having us vote on, and that’s kind of crazy.”

He added, “You’re telling us to condemn a man? I am not God, I cannot condemn a man, I can condemn the actions of a man, but I cannot condemn a man, and that is what you’re asking us to do here.”

Glaush questioned why condemning Bradley was the first priority rather than helping those whose information was exposed.

The board acknowledged in the resolution that it does not have unilateral authority to remove a director from office. Under the Pennsylvania Public School Code, removal requires a court proceeding brought by resident taxpayers. The board directed its legal team to evaluate all available remedies and said it would cooperate with any qualified taxpayer who chooses to pursue a statutory removal proceeding.

Carbon County District Attorney Michael Greek said last week his office is consulting with state and federal authorities about the breach.

Lehighton resident Autumn Abelovsky cautioned the board not to lose sight of systemic questions raised by the breach.

“Ignorance and intention don’t change guilt or innocence,” she said. “He admitted he did it, so therefore he is guilty. Community and school district resources shouldn’t be put into investigating Mr. Bradley’s innocence or guilt. The focus needs to be put on how this happened.”

Committee appointed

The board also approved Policy 012, which explicitly prohibits board members from disclosing, posting or disseminating any confidential information obtained through board service — including attorney-client privileged communications, student records, personnel information, Social Security numbers and anything discussed in executive session. The policy further bars any board member involved in litigation or adversarial proceedings against the district from attending executive sessions or accessing materials related to those matters. It applies to Office of Open Records disputes, insurance claims, investigations and any other adversarial process in which a board member is personally involved.

The policy was adopted on an expedited basis, bypassing the standard first-reading process. Glaush objected strenuously to the procedure, comparing the urgency to that which produced the post-Sept. 11 Patriot Act.

“There’s some urgency to this, but there was urgency to the Patriot Act, and it was bad, and bad things happened,” Glaush said. “I don’t think we should break procedure.”

Glaush ultimately voted yes, saying a lot of the policy was sound.

Bradley, meanwhile, voted no.

In other action Monday, Board President Alex Matika appointed a three-member ad hoc committee — Directors Hartley, Heather Neff and William Howland — to lead the district’s ongoing response to the breach.