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Welcome back everyone from winter break and from our recent inclement weather event.

 

I'm pleased to welcome our new Board of Education members to their first meeting and their tenure on the Board. Congratulations Ms. Trish McGee and Mr. John Queen for being voted to the Board leadership for the 2025 year. I look forward to working with you and the entire Board moving forward this year.

 

I would be remiss if I did not take a moment to thank everyone for their incredible flexibility last week as we navigated the recent snowstorm.

 

Everyone demonstrated tremendous teamwork each day as we moved from traditional closures into virtual instruction. We were in team meetings, conferring, checking roads and checking into virtual instruction lessons. Our principals were well engaged as were our teachers and our students.

 

In the spirit of continuous improvement, we sent out this morning a survey to our parents to receive feedback on the experience to inform our future practice. By 4 p.m., we had 143 responses. About 80% of responses were positive overall. We gave an opportunity for people to provide us with feedback for improvement, and we'll continue to look at these responses.

 

I want to thank our parents, because to be able to turn on a dime like that requires everyone to be on the same team, and it went well overall.

 

Let's hope that we don't have any more inclement weather days, though.

 

Additionally, I want to just make sure that I share with the community information related to PowerSchool.

 

PowerSchool is a vendor product that we use for our student information system and other systems that we are brining on board. PowerSchool is a product that's used by almost every school system in the state of Maryland and thousands of school systems across the nation.

 

PowerSchool — the system that we use to maintain our student data — announced to us and all school systems last week that it had experienced a data breach in late December. It was over our winter break.

 

We directly contacted our families last week to inform them of that breach. The company said that the cybersecurity incident is contained and that there is no current or ongoing threat to our students' and our educators' data.

 

Our IT team is continuing to work with PowerSchool and technology leaders in other districts across the state and state government agencies related to this Power School incident.

 

PowerSchool said the incident was an attack or the company — which is used by many districts in Maryland and throughout the nation — and that the attack was not on any single school system. It's really on the vendor.

 

It was made clear that there was no additional action that Kent County Public Schools could have taken to prevent this breach.

 

The company has committed to providing more information and resources — which could include credit monitoring or identity protection services, if applicable — as it becomes available.

 

We take the security of our students' and staff members' personal information very seriously and we understand how the PowerSchool breach is a great concern for everyone. We are coordinating actively with PowerSchool and our partners throughout the state to fully assess this situation and safeguard our community.

 

I just wanted to make sure that we shared that point of record with everyone. Certainly, if you have concerns, reach out to myself and then we'll coordinate with our team and PowerSchool.

 

And then lastly, as part of my report, I just will say that by Friday, we'll be in the middle of January already. It's going fast!

Posted: Jan. 14, 2025