By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
The Russell and Hays school districts have notified students and staff their districts were affected by the nationwide PowerSchool breach.
Hays USD 489 released a letter to parents and staff about the breach Tuesday night.
The breach occurred on Dec. 28, according to the letter.
"According to the message from PowerSchool, they believe that this breach is now contained but may have affected personally identifiable information of our employees and/or students and their families, " the letter said.
"USD 489 is serious about protecting the security and privacy of your data. This breach not only violates our expectations for district vendors; it also violates board policy and Kansas law," the letter said.
The letter said the district has limited information about the data affected and is working with its legal counsel and PowerSchool to determine the extent of the data that might have been affected.
The letter said the district would notify staff and families of the credit monitoring and identity protection services that PowerSchool offers.
"We would like to stress that the compromised account was not a USD 489 account, and we had no control over the breached PowerSchool support account," the letter said. "Other USD 489 systems were not affected and remain secured.
"We are taking precautionary steps with password resets for staff and will be looking at the same for student and parent accounts in the coming weeks. We have also denied remote support access from PowerSchool, so they are unable to access our PowerSchool server without our knowledge and approval."
District officials said they highly encourage everyone to be cautious of unexpected emails, calls or messages requesting.
Russell sent a similar letter to its parents.
The Russell superintendent confirmed the district has been impacted by the PowerSchool breach.
Superintendent Jordan Perez said they were informed on Jan. 7 by PowerSchool that they experienced a cybersecurity incident involving unauthorized access to certain PowerSchool SIS customer data.
Perez said the company is investigating the impact and resources, including credit monitoring or identity protection services, that will be provided as they become available.