More than 33,000 Mainers affected by school cyber breach
Jan. 28—More than 33,000 Mainers were affected by a data breach of the education software provider PowerSchool last month, according to a notification filed Monday by the company with the Office of the Maine Attorney General.
The global K-12 software company suffered a cybersecurity breach that occurred on Dec. 19 and was discovered on Dec. 28, according to the notification. The company says 33,488 Maine residents were affected, although it does not include details about which school districts were impacted. There are about 170,000 publicly enrolled students in Maine, according to the state Department of Education.
At least nine Maine districts, including Brunswick, Cumberland, Gardiner and Yarmouth, notified families of the breach in email notifications or online announcements earlier this month.
Monday's filing includes a template of a letter from PowerSchool that districts could use to notify affected families. It includes a summary of the breach situation, which it describes as an "unauthorized exfiltration of certain personal information from PowerSchool Student Information System (SIS) environments through one of our community-focused customer support portals, PowerSource."
The letter also explains what personal information might have been accessed.
"Due to differences in customer requirements, the types of information involved in this incident included one or more of the following, which varied by person: name, contact information, date of birth, Social Security Number, limited medical alert information, and other related information," the letter reads.
It also offers options for affected individuals to enroll in complementary credit monitoring or identity protection for two years.
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Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Court documents have revealed new details about the Trump administration's attempts to transfer the management of the country's $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio away from the Department of Education. The documents, submitted to a federal court, showed that the Department of Education had been negotiating a deal with the Treasury to oversee federal student loans, a role historically managed by the department's Federal Student Aid office. The plan was put on hold after a federal judge blocked the administration's broader efforts to dismantle the Department of Education. Newsweek reached out to the Treasury Department for comment. 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The court's intervention kept existing federal student loan programs under the purview of the Department of Education, restricting the administration from shifting responsibilities to other agencies without congressional approval. Some experts have said that while the Treasury Department is more experienced than the SBA in managing collections and public funds, shifting federal student loan management would demand legislative action. The Higher Education Act of 1965 stipulates that loan responsibilities are assigned to the Federal Student Aid within the Department of Education. The Treasury's 2014-2015 pilot program for collecting defaulted student loans reportedly yielded lower returns than private collection agencies. Proposals to integrate student loan repayments with wage withholding systems have also faced complications due to income-reporting and privacy limitations. 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Alex Beene, a financial literacy instructor for the University of Tennessee at Martin, told Newsweek: "The proposal for the Treasury to take over the federal administrative responsibilities for student loans is no surprise, as this was a change largely discussed when the administration started ramping up its planning to shutter parts of the Department of Education. For student loan borrowers, if the plan was ever to take effect, it would more than likely not mark a substantial change to their current payment plans." What Happens Next The status of federal student loan management—and who ultimately oversees the $1.6 trillion portfolio—remains unresolved pending further court action and any potential congressional intervention. "It would just be the shift from one department overseeing the debt to another. At the same time, this proposal becoming a reality is something that may increasingly not occur," Beene said. "Disbanding and relocating aspects of the Department of Education would require congressional involvement, and there's already signs of hesitation to supporting such." Borrowers are advised to continue routine payments as legal and policy outcomes develop.
