PowerSchool Data Breach Affects One Local School District
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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The Virginia Mercury reported Tuesday afternoon that there had been a data breach at PowerSchool, an online company whose suite of products supports teachers, students, and administrators in schools across the nation. The breach occurred in its PowerSource product, a “customer support portal for all PowerSchool products,” according to the company’s website, and potentially affected 85 districts across Virginia.
The Advance reached out to Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, and Stafford school systems Tuesday evening to discover if they had been affected by the data breach, which the Mercury reports “compromised student, parent and teacher information.”
Fredericksburg City Schools’ deputy superintendent, Matt Eberhardt, confirmed via text message that the city’s school system had been affected by the breach.
Communications supervisor Katie Hornung shared with the Advance two communications the district has sent to “all internal stakeholders via ParentSquare,” which is not a PowerSchool product, though they do have a partnership.
The first went out on January 13, 2025, and said:
“On Tuesday, January 7, PowerSchool … announced that it had suffered a cybersecurity incident in late December. … Although security of PowerSchool’s systems has been restored, data pertaining to students and employees at many school systems around the country were subjected to unauthorized access. The breach was limited to PowerSchool’s internal systems.”
The communication continued, noting that “FCPS is one of thousands impacted by the massive data breach” and that “PowerSchool has assured us that they are investigating the matter.”
On Monday January 20, Fredericksburg Schools sent a second communication.
“… FCPS utilizes some PowerSchool tools and has received assurances from PowerSchool that the company will notify any impacted members of the FCPS community. PowerSchool’s investigation into this matter is ongoing, and FCPS has not been provided with details on what information was exposed for specific individuals.”
It continues: “While PowerSchool is responsible for this incident and its impact, FCPS is implementing our cyber incident procedures as well as working with PowerSchool to direct our further response.”
Speaking by phone, Spotsylvania County Schools’ superintendent Clint Mitchell said that while the school system uses some PowerSchool products for its work, it does not use the programs that were compromised in the data breach.
Stafford County School’s chief communications officer Sandra Osborn informed the Advance on Tuesday night that Stafford Schools is in the same position as Spotsylvania. It uses some PowerSchool products, but not the ones that were affected by the data breach.
PowerSchool has a webpage dedicated to this incident
Updated 1/23/2025 at 10:34 AM to clarify information about Stafford County Public Schools’ PowerSchool use.
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