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Senate committee backs bill to cut K–12 paperwork; staff defends statewide PowerSchool platform after 2024 incident
Summary
Senate Bill 280, aimed at reducing duplicative K–12 paperwork through technology, received a favorable committee report. Education staff explained the statewide PowerSchool platform, its roughly $13 million annual cost, local data-input practices and a December 2024 corporate incident that did not, they said, expose Alabama student records.
Senate Bill 280, which encourages use of technology to reduce duplicative paperwork in K–12 schools, received a favorable report from a Senate committee in Montgomery after senators questioned how the change would affect staff who are not tech-savvy and how student data are protected.
Senator Orr and others said the bill would push districts to use technology to cut duplication. Senator Smitherman raised concerns about staff members who lack digital skills and asked what accommodations would exist for those employees.
A staff witness described current statewide practice: "We currently consolidate, like, all of the ... IEPs, student health plans ... in one platform, which is a PowerSchool platform," the staff member said. The witness explained that many records are entered at the local school level (special education teachers, counselors, school secretaries) and that the statewide setup allows records to transfer across districts.
The staff member said the statewide PowerSchool contract costs "about $13,000,000 a year" and that the state added an "insights" module using artificial intelligence to run internal queries; staff emphasized the system does not send student data to external AI services: "It does not tie artificial intelligence to the general Internet. So it is only an internal ... it only uses our data to train the database. No data that we have on students ever leaves and goes out to the Internet to say g GPT or anything like that."
Committee members also asked about a PowerSchool corporate incident in December 2024. The staff witness said PowerSchool's international systems experienced a breach on 12/23/2024 but the state believes Alabama student data were not released and that PowerSchool implemented multifactor authentication and additional encryption.
The bill passed committee by previous roll (16 ayes, 0 nays).
Why it matters
The measure would accelerate technology use in schools to reduce paperwork and duplicate entries, affect local data-entry practices and implicate a statewide vendor contract costing the state roughly $13 million annually. Committee members sought assurances on training and protections for less tech-savvy school staff and on student-data security following the PowerSchool incident.
