Westerville superintendent warns families of PowerSchool cybersecurity incident affecting some student and staff records

Superintendent Angie Hamburg told the Westerville City Schools Board of Education that the district’s PowerSchool data were compromised as part of a broader cybersecurity event affecting multiple Central Ohio districts.

Hamburg said PowerSchool stores student and staff information for the district and that "it's not our common practice to store student social security numbers in there, so we did have a handful that were in there." She added the district believes most of the exposed information was directory‑type data such as names and addresses but that a small number of older records may include Social Security numbers.

The district said it is continuing to monitor the situation and is working with its technology director, Tim Stifler, META (the hosting provider mentioned by staff), the Ohio Cyber Security Reserve and other districts to investigate and remediate the incident. Hamburg said the district has been asked whether credit monitoring will be provided; she said the district expects PowerSchool to provide information on credit‑monitoring options but that the district had not yet received final details.

Hamburg noted that the breached records included both current and former students and staff, and that notifying older records may be harder because contact information is incomplete for some former individuals. The district urged patience while staff continue the investigation and said it will update families as new information on remediation or credit‑monitoring becomes available.

Ending: The district is continuing technical and notification steps and will communicate updates to families when additional information from PowerSchool and partners is available.