Dear Parents and Guardians,

We are notifying you that PowerSchool, Golden Hills School Division’s third-party student information system, informed school divisions/districts they had a data breach incident across North America that impacted student and staff data. PowerSchool is a third-party which provides a cloud-based student information system used by most school divisions in Alberta, Canada, United States and internationally. 

Golden Hills was informed Tuesday afternoon of a breach that took place in late December 2024. Golden Hills School Division takes the security and privacy of personal information very seriously. Since being notified, we have been working to gather additional information from PowerSchool on their investigation and our Technology team has been conducting their own investigation. We assure you that no financial information was stored in PowerSchool.   

PowerSchool stated an unauthorized party gained access to certain PowerSchool student information system demographic data using one of their corporate support credentials which became compromised. PowerSchool has a third-party cyber security response team investigating the incident. PowerSchool has assured us it is contained, but potentially some student and staff data may have been obtained during the breach. PowerSchool has stated they do not anticipate the data involved being shared or made public, and they believe it has been deleted without any further replication or dissemination. The company has indicated they have increased security within their systems to prevent further incidents. The system remains fully functional and is safe to use. 

PowerSchool will be providing further communication as it becomes available to those who may have been impacted.  

Thank you for your patience and understanding

Jeff Grimsdale
Superintendent of Schools