PowerSchool Cybersecurity Incident

Subject: Important Notification about PowerSchool Cybersecurity Incident

Hello Montgomery County Schools families and staff,

Tuesday afternoon, the state of North Carolina’s student information system provider, PowerSchool, notified our district that an unauthorized party gained access to their system. School systems across the state, nation and world were impacted, potentially including MCS. PowerSchool is a web-based platform school systems are required by North Carolina to use to maintain student and staff data. Protecting student and staff information is critically important, and we are taking this issue seriously.

Information about MCS students, families and staff may have been accessed during this incident and the incident is under investigation by PowerSchool, federal law enforcement, and NC Department of Public Instruction officials. PowerSchool reported that steps were taken to prevent the data from further misuse and the company believes the data has been deleted. According to PowerSchool, the incident is contained and they do not anticipate the data being shared or made public. Law enforcement officials are monitoring to ensure the information has not been spread or shared.

MCS officials are working closely with PowerSchool and NC DPI to identify what information was accessed and to determine what steps will be taken by PowerSchool to support any individual whose data has been breached.

NC DPI states there was no action MCS could have taken to prevent this alleged incident, which happened at the company level.

We will keep families and staff informed as we learn more about the magnitude of the breach from PowerSchool and NC DPI. Thank you for your patience as we and our state partners work through this situation.