CLAFLIN — A cybersecurity attack hit close to home when Central Plains USD 112’s student information system, PowerSchool, was recently breached.

In a letter published on the district’s website, Superintendent Bobby Murphy wrote about the incident.

“Protecting our students is something we take seriously,” the statement read.

Murphy spent the last few minutes of the Jan. 13 board of education meeting discussing the PowerSchool issue with board members and did not return emails or calls requesting additional information.

“My hope is PowerSchool fixes what they did and goes back and figures out how they’re going to make it right for everybody,” Murphy told board members Jan. 13.

At the BOE meeting, board members gave consensus, and a letter was posted on the district’s website.

The letter stated the district was informed Jan. 7 about the incident “involving unauthorized access to certain PowerSchool SIS customer data. Unfortunately, they have confirmed that the information belongs to some of USD 112’s families and educators.”

According to PowerSchool’s website, it became aware of the issue Dec. 28.

“PowerSchool is not experiencing, nor does it expect to experience, any operational disruption and continues to provide services as normal to our customers,” a statement on the website reads.

As a result of the breach, PowerSchool is offering two years of complimentary identity protection services with Experian for all affected students and educators.

“For involved students and educators, the types of information exfiltrated in the incident may have included one or more of the following: the individual’s name, contact information, date of birth, limited medical alert information, Social Security number and other related information. Due to differences in customer requirements, the information exfiltrated for any given individual varied across our customer base,” PowerSchool’s site states.

PowerSchool declined to disclose how many districts were affected by the security breach.

“I don’t know what this is going to mean long-term for PowerSchool,” Murphy said at the BOE meeting. “Down the line we could look at another SIS depending on what happens with PowerSchool.”

USD 327 Ellsworth-Kanopolis-Geneseo does not utilize PowerSchool; no student or educator information from USD 327 was compromised.

Additional information is available online at https://www.powerschool. com/security/sisincident/.