Dear FMS families and Staff,
FMS is extremely concerned with this security breach and is communicating with PowerSchool to understand the full extent of the incident and what they’ll do to prevent it from happening again in the future. FMS is committed to keeping our families informed and will continue to share updates as we learn more.
Add: FMS prioritizes the safety of student and staff information by teaching employees best practices for online security. Staff are trained not to reuse passwords across different sites, share them, or create passwords that are easy to guess. They also learn how to recognize phishing emails, where scammers pretending to be someone from the district or a trusted vendor might try to steal login details.
To add an extra layer of protection, FMS uses multi-factor authentication. This means staff need more than just a username and password to access their systems, keeping our data even more secure.
1st Update from PowerSchool
Did you receive the email from PowerSchool CEO, Hardeep Gulati on Thursday, January 9, providing you with resources about the incident to share with your families and educators? In case you missed it, here's a copy.
We now have a public statement and community-facing FAQs available on our website. We will continue to update our General FAQs available in PowerSchool Community, to help you understand the impact. If you previously inquired about how to check your SIS access logs, we now have an article on Community with instructions on how to do so, and the associated FAQs. We encourage you to review the documentation, and if you have questions outside the information provided, please complete this form and a member of the PowerSchool team will follow up.
2nd Update from PowerSchool
On January 29, 2025, PowerSchool initiated the process of notifying individuals whose information was determined to be involved.
PowerSchool has engaged Experian, a trusted credit reporting agency, to provide complimentary identity protection and credit monitoring services to current and former students and educators who had information exfiltrated from PowerSchool SIS. Experian (on behalf of PowerSchool) will be distributing direct email notifications to involved individuals (or their parent/guardian, as applicable) for whom PowerSchool has sufficient contact information.
Whether or not you receive an email, you may also visit PowerSchool’s website to learn how to activate the offering from Experian, linked here.
Additionally, PowerSchool has worked with Experian to set up a dedicated, toll-free call center to answer any questions associated with these offerings and the incident.