Back in January, Beaufort County parents (and others around the state) received notifications about a data breach affecting PowerSchool, a cloud-based information management service sold to school districts across the U.S. and in many different countries.

PowerSchool’s Student Information System (SIS) tracks everything from attendance to grades to medical information, and on the administrative side it offers scheduling, compliance reporting, and parent engagement tools. Students’ social security numbers and other personally identifiable information (PII) are stored in the PowerSchool cloud.

You won’t find any mention of the data breach on PowerSchool’s site (at least, not that I can see), but they do have the standard platitudes about their top notch security:

Yes, PowerSchool is very committed to data availability – it’s now available to everyone, everywhere, all at once.

This topic has been nagging at me ever since January. I’ve narrowed it down to to main reasons:

1) It’s amazing how accustomed we are to companies being careless with our PII. Data breaches like this barely register, and we all must be up to at least a half-dozen offers of “one year of free credit monitoring.” Now my student can join the club.

2) Here in Beaufort County, we’re at the heart of South Carolina’s book banning movement. I won’t go into a long summary, but a handful of Moms for Liberty-inspired residents began demanding the removal of books from public schools. At the same time, state and national politicians have been exploiting the moment by flooding the airwaves and state legislatures with histrionics laced with homophobia, xenophobia, and anti-intellectualism. All in the name, of course, of “protecting the children.” On the ground, as a parent with a student in public school here, I can say that this is a manufactured controversy. But if you listen to people like Ellen Weaver (whose political hackery deserves a post of its own), they’re saving children from certain doom by banning books from public schools…and in the case of Shannon Erickson, even promoting legislation that bans the discussion of certain ideas so nobody has to think too hard.

Obviously, the less children know, the safer they are, right?

As far as reason #1 goes, I have to write it off as a sign of the times. It’s been twelve years since South Carolina’s Department of Revenue gave away all of my PII in a breach of taxpayer data. What’s another breach? Criminals are probably tired of seeing my name on their list(s). Maybe that’s the best way to deal with the issue of “consumer privacy,” anyway – just keep giving everything away, and at some point all value will be lost. (As of 3/24/25, we may need to call this “The Hegseth Principle.”)

But reason #2 is the sticky one. Aside from the standard, “This wasn’t really our fault, it was a vendor problem, here – have some credit monitoring,” from state superintendent* Ellen Weaver, I’ve heard nothing from Beaufort County’s legislative delegation, or any other state leader, about the fact that their chosen education information management system vendor compromised children’s PII. Names, social security numbers, medical information, and who knows what else – all free to the Internet winds.

People who climb all over each other to grab a microphone to spout “protect the children!” when they see a book about diversity are silent when children’s records are compromised. Where are the committee meetings? Where are the pledges to hold PowerSchool accountable? When will contracts come up for bids? What are some alternative systems?

Where’s Moms for Security?

(*) I have to add an asterisk any time I spell out Weaver’s title due to the masters degree shenanigans required to make the former conservative “think tank” CEO eligible for the position.