PowerSchool Breach
January 10, 2025
Dear Parents/Guardians:
We are writing to make you aware of a recent cybersecurity incident involving PowerSchool, a software vendor, which provides our Student Information System (SIS).
On Tuesday, January 7, 2025, PowerSchool informed our leadership team that they experienced a cybersecurity incident involving unauthorized access to certain PowerSchool SIS customer data. Unfortunately, they have confirmed that the information belongs to some of Southern School District’s families and educators.
PowerSchool informed us that the taken data primarily includes parent and student contact information, with data elements such as name and address information. Across their customer base, they have determined that for a portion of individuals, some Personally Identifiable Information (PII), such as medical information, was impacted. They are working with urgency to complete their investigation and determine whether PII belonging to our students was included. More than half of the school districts across Nebraska use PowerSchool as their SIS.
Just a little over two years ago, Southern updated our enrollment forms, and one of the items that we took off of the enrollment forms was requesting for Social Security numbers. In addition, we went ahead and took out all of the Social Security numbers for both students and staff members in PowerSchool. We knew it wasn’t a matter of if our SIS would be hacked, but a matter of when our SIS would be hacked. You can rest assured that your child’s Social Security number was not compromised.
Protecting our students is something we take seriously. With PowerSchool’s help, more information and resources (including credit monitoring or identity protection services if applicable) will be provided to you as it becomes available.
Thank you for your patience and understanding. Please feel free to contact Dr. Prososki if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Christopher Prososki, Ed.D.
Superintendent