Data Breach Affects Students in Rome, Other CNY Districts

If you have school-age children in a Central New York school district, their information may have been accessible after a data breach late last month.

Many school districts across the country use Pearson Education, an online educational program based in London, and when hackers got access to Pearson, they also gained access to the information of over 13,000 students. The information was thankfully just limited to just their names, birthdays, and schools, according to Syracuse.com, but it still feels like an invasion of privacy.

Although Pearson told Yahoo News the basics about the breach last month, they did not release specifics, including which districts across the U.S. had been affected. That small detail was left up to district administrators, who could choose whether or not to disclose the information to parents and students.

Last week, Peter Blake, the superintendent of Rome City Schools, sent a letter home to parents notifying them of the data breach, which locally affected students K-8 in the 2013-2014 school year. He told Syracuse.com that he heard about the breach two weeks ago and wanted to be transparent with parents about what was going on, even though he know some districts are choosing to not share the information.

Other CNY districts that have shared they have been affected by the breach include Brighton, Brockport, East Irondequoit, Fairport, East Rochester, Greece, Pittsford, Rochester, Spencerport, Victor, Webster and West Irondequoit, according to the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle.

Blake told Syracuse.com that his district contracted Pearson to provide a testing tool called AIMSweb that they mostly use for ELA and math test intervention.