The Lower Kuskokwim School District (LKSD) recently announced that it is taking measures to protect students and staff who had their personal information stolen as part of a massive data breach of the PowerSchool student information platform that affected districts across the state.
For decades, school districts across the country have made use of the cloud-based platform that allows students, staff, and parents to keep track of grades, attendance, and homework assignments, among other functions.
In December 2024, PowerSchool announced that an unknown entity had infiltrated a customer support portal and downloaded an undisclosed number of student and staff records containing personal identifying information.
The company, which provides services for more than 50 million students in the United States, Canada, and a host of other countries, has not said exactly how many people were affected by the data breach.
In the Lower Kuskokwim School District, the largest rural school district in Alaska, the breach hit students and staff who used PowerSchool between July 2003 and December 2024, according to a March 10 notice posted on the district’s website. Social security numbers and medical alert information were among the data stolen, according to the notice.
In an email to KYUK, the district wrote that of more than 3,000 staff records affected by the data breach, just 42 contained social security numbers and 134 contained dates of birth. But from 14,102 student records affected, all contained dates of birth and roughly 87% included students’ social security numbers. Medical alert information was contained in 513 student records, while the district said that there is no indication this information was contained in staff records.
The district, which currently has roughly 4,000 students across 27 schools, said that it will separately contact PowerSchool users whose social security numbers were stolen. It also said that moves have been made to only list the last four digits of social security numbers, while also “locking down PowerSchool’s maintenance access.”
The district said that it doesn’t believe there is a risk of the data being leaked to the public going forward, given “measures PowerSchool has taken to re-secure the stolen data.” The company said that it was extorted into paying money to the entity responsible for the data breach, but has not said how much.
In response to the data breach, PowerSchool is offering two years of free credit monitoring and identity protection services to anyone who believes they may have been affected through a service called Experian IdentityWorks. The deadline to enroll is May 30.
The Lower Kuskokwim School District said that it encourages parents to sign up students younger than 18 years old for the service before the deadline, as the two-year free period would go into effect when students turn 18.
The Lower Kuskokwim School District is one of thousands of districts across the country that use PowerSchool’s services. One school district in Wisconsin affected by the data breach recently sued the company, saying that the company failed to provide the security and encryption services it promised. A slew of class-action lawsuits seeking financial compensation have also been filed against the company.
In the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, the Lower Yukon School District was also affected by the breach. It is unclear exactly how many of the more than 20 Alaska school districts that use PowerSchool were affected. It is also unclear why the Lower Kuskokwim School District was storing social security numbers in PowerSchool.
The superintendent for the Juneau School District, which also reported being affected by the data breach, told KTOO that the district had not stored any social security numbers in PowerSchool.
In response to an email asking whether PowerSchool plans to offer affected users any further compensation beyond the credit monitoring and identity theft services, a spokesperson referred KYUK to the company’s website for the latest updates.
