PowerSchool, Rocky View Schools’ (RVS) student information system, informed RVS they had a data breach incident impacting many school divisions across North America including RVS. PowerSchool is a third-party which provides a cloud-based student information system used by most school divisions in Canada, the United States and internationally.

PowerSchool informed RVS Tuesday afternoon (Jan. 7, 2025) of a breach that took place on Dec. 28, 2024. RVS takes the security and privacy of personal information very seriously. Since we were notified, we have been working to gather additional information from PowerSchool on their investigation and our Technology team has been conducting our own investigation. While the scope of the incident is still being determined, we can reassure families and staff that no financial information was stored in PowerSchool. On Jan. 9, 2025, we notified all impacted individuals using available contact information of this incident and applicable privacy regulators.

PowerSchool has stated an unauthorized party gained access to certain PowerSchool student information system demographic data using one of their corporate support credentials which became compromised. PowerSchool has a third-party cyber security response team investigating the incident. They believe it is contained but some of RVS’ student and staff data may have been obtained during the breach. PowerSchool has stated they do not anticipate the data involved being shared or made public, and they believe it has been deleted without any further replication or dissemination. The company has indicated the incident has been contained and they have increased security within their systems to prevent further incidents.

We do not have any further information from PowerSchool and do not know the extent to which our division was compromised. We understand the concern this will cause for many of our families and staff, and we assure all those impacted by this situation RVS is taking this very seriously. PowerSchool has committed to sharing more detailed information with us when they have it. We will communicate what we know to families and staff as quickly as possible when we know more. The system remains fully functional and is safe to use.

We are sharing the letter sent to us from PowerSchool notifying us of the breach.

View the letter as a PDF