As of November 2025, East Lansing Public Schools is joining in on the California-based lawsuit to sue PowerSchool for the December 2024 data breach.
Private information was compromised after a PowerSchool staff member missed a security step, allowing hackers to take advantage of the vulnerability. Board of Education President Chris Martin took immediate concern to this breach.
“Whenever we do have these cyber security type issues come up, [it’s an academic technology] matter,” Martin said.
It is estimated over 60 million students’ private information was leaked.
When the breach occurred, schools nationwide were notified that students’ and staff members’ information, including addresses, medical records and Social Security numbers had been accessed and threatened by hackers.
In terms of priorities for the district, the most important thing for Martin is that every student has the opportunity to achieve at their highest potential.
“It’s essential that we provide tools for children to succeed,” Martin said.
The incident ultimately prompted the filing of a federal case in the United States District Court. The Frantz Law Group, a California-based firm representing East Lansing and other districts in the case, notified Michigan schools using PowerSchool in December 2024, including those that have not formally joined the lawsuit, of the breach.
Schools are likely to be affected by the PowerSchool litigation regardless of whether they take independent action. Districts nationwide have experienced impacts resulting in data theft, ransom demands and major disruptions that forced schools to strengthen security and provide credit monitoring.
“We’re what you call a passive participant [in the lawsuit]” Martin said. “We’re not actively driving litigation, but if there’s a settlement, we would accept a portion of [it] if we’re entitled to the decision.”
Some have little to no awareness of PowerSchool’s conduct due to limited communication. The total number of schools affected by the breach remains unknown, but the lawsuit includes claims of negligence, breach of contract, fraudulent misrepresentation and statutory violations.
Despite the small size of East Lansing’s technology department, if they weren’t on the problem trying to find a solution right away, ELPS data could have been put in jeopardy.
Teachers and students click on emails all the time because of the unfamiliarity known about bots and hackers who successfully come through into ELPS ‘ private information. The technology department works so that it’s rare for a data breach to happen to the school. PowerSchool is a database the district purchases and the technology department manages the security of it, which works for the whole district while being based at the high school.
District Media Specialist Kathy Kowalski has been working at ELHS for over 30 years. She does a lot of different tasks for the school, working partly in tech. Kowalski handles tech issues with PowerSchool and addresses problems on devices like iPads and Chromebooks for the district.
“Everybody else around here got hacked and we did not because we have such a good technology department and they are on top of things,” Kowalski said. “They are so good at blocking emails.”
All schools who used PowerSchool in 2024 are eligible to join the lawsuit, regardless if they were directly involved with information being leaked. ELPS is formally joining the lawsuit, titled “MDL No. 3149,” which is a consolidated lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.
Frantz Law Group explained that PowerSchool’s service fees included charges for data security. Because of this, schools may have overpaid for PowerSchool services if their data was not properly protected, regardless of whether the security deficiencies resulted in an actual breach.
“We’re [lucky] we have an amazing technology department and did not get caught up in [the] breach,” Kowalski said.
