ROCK SPRINGS — Anyone who has either attended or taught at a Sweetwater County School District No. 1 school between 2000 and 2025 are being informed they can sign up for credit monitoring services after a data breach involving PowerSchool was reported.
Stephanie Tolman, the chief information officer for the school district, sent a message through ParentSquare telling residents PowerSchool is in the process of notifying people whose personal information was involved in the data breach. Regardless of if their information was taken, PowerSchool, partnering with Experian, is offering free credit monitoring, which can be activated through this link. The deadline to apply is May 30, 2025.
Experian will contact those directly impacted by the breach via email in the coming weeks so long as PowerSchool has sufficient contact information available to them. A toll-free call center is also being set up to answer questions about the incident and credit monitoring offer.
Tolman said the district would continue to share information through the district’s Facebook page and its website.
Tolman told SweetwaterNOW that student and teacher tables were downloaded from PowerSchool, including teacher and student tables from SCSD No.1. Those tables include information like demographics, contact information, and guardian information. She said some of the fields are currently used while other information fields either haven’t been used for years or were never utilized by the district.
According to technology news website Ars Technica, fallout from the breach has been reported throughout the US and Canada. The website cites a notification parents, teachers and former students received from the Toronto District School Board informing them the breach exposed sensitive information from all their students between 1985 and 2024. The website also reports Menlo Park City School District said information was stolen belonging to all students and staff, as well as students and many staff members who worked at the district since the start of the 2009-2010 school year.
Beeping Computer, a website covering cybersecurity news, reported on an extortion note the attacker sent to PowerSchool an extortion note claiming the personal data of 62.4 million students and 9.5 million teachers were taken during the breach. The website also reported assurances PowerSchool said it received that the data wouldn’t be released publicly were based on a video showing the alleged threat actor deleting the data after PowerSchool paid a ransom to prevent the data from being released. The website notes while a video shows the data being deleted, there is never a 100% guarantee it was.
