January 9, 2025

Dear Ball Charter Schools Parents and Families,

On Tuesday, January 7, 2025, Ball Charter Schools Administration became aware of a data breach at PowerSchool involving several thousand student and staff/faculty records. Through an extensive investigation process, the BCS IT Manager verified that the PowerSchool Student Information System (SIS) was breached on December 22, 2024. PowerSchool said it became aware of the potential cybersecurity problem when unauthorized access was made on December 28, 2024.

Upon further investigation, we have learned the breach impacted several schools, districts, and states throughout the country. PowerSchool acknowledges the breach was widespread. Again, the breach was nothing related to Ball Charter Schools’ systems, network, or administration of the SIS.  

While it isn’t clear what data may have become available during the access, a PowerSchool spokesperson said, “We have taken all appropriate steps to prevent the data involved from further unauthorized access or misuse. The incident is contained, and we do not anticipate the data being shared or made public.”

The safety and privacy of our faculty, staff, students and their families are of the utmost importance to us. We take our responsibility to protect sensitive data very seriously. Although we are relatively certain the compromised information will not become public, we must certainly exercise due diligence in monitoring personal information.

 If have any questions or concerns, please feel free contact the school administration or email us directly at: parentinfo@ballcharterschools.org. We are monitoring the inbox closely to ensure a prompt response to inquiries, recognizing the news of a data breach is unsettling. However, please recognize that our information is limited to what PowerSchool is sharing with us.   

Respectfully,

Gregory A. McFann, Ed.D.                                                                            

Senior Director of Academics and Administration                                 

Ball Charter Schools