Tag: school safety

  • ICE Nabs Iowa School Leader – The 74

    ICE Nabs Iowa School Leader – The 74

    School (in)Security is our biweekly briefing on the latest school safety news, vetted by Mark Keierleber. Subscribe here.

    The top campus security story this week is the resignation of Iowa’s largest school district superintendent, who was detained by federal immigration authorities on allegations he was living and working in the U.S. without authorization. 

    In a “targeted enforcement operation” a week ago, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Ian Roberts, a 54-year-old native of Guyana, who has led Des Moines Public Schools since 2023.

    The fast-moving chain of events raises questions about why ICE agents specifically sought the arrest of the public official and the city’s first Black schools superintendent, whom federal officials said had a previously unreported final order of removal issued by an immigration judge on May 29. Yesterday, he was accused of federal firearm charges for possessing a gun at the time of his arrest.

    The Trump administration has already tied Roberts’ detainment to the president’s broader crackdown on affirmative action. The Justice Department announced Tuesday it would investigate Des Moines Public Schools to determine if it engaged in race-based hiring. 

    In 2021, the district’s former human resources manager said that out of Des Moines Public Schools’ 4,000 staff members, some 400 were Black. His comments were made as the district reflected on hiring Iowa’s first Black teacher 75 years earlier.

    The unraveling of Roberts’ career is also a story of purported deception. The school board, whose vetting practices have come under scrutiny, released a letter this week saying it is “also a victim,” after Roberts was accused of falsifying records about his immigration status and academic credentials.

    Roberts, an Olympic runner for his native Guyana who came to the U.S. in 1999 on a student visa, previously served in leadership roles at school districts in Pennsylvania and Missouri and at a major charter school network. 

    Get up to speed with this step-by-step explainer by the Des Moines Register.

    In the news

    A TikTok post led to the arrest of a Kennewick, Washington, 14-year-old who officials say had guns, a color-coded map of his high school and a manifesto outlining plans to carry out a campus shooting. | Tri-City Herald

    In California, authorities say an anonymous tip thwarted a potential school shooting after a student posted “detailed threats” on social media including a “mapped-out plan.” | NBC News
    The Education Department announced it would withhold more than $65 million in federal grants to the New York City, Chicago and Fairfax, Virginia, school districts for upholding equity policies designed to support transgender and Black youth. | The New York Times

    Campus speech at the forefront: More than 350 complaints have been submitted to the Texas education department against public school employees accused of publishing social media posts that praised the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. | Fort Worth Report

    • The Los Angeles Unified School District faces accusations that its social media policy, which allows educators to ban parents from campus for making threatening or racist online comments about school officials, violates the First Amendment. | LAist
    • ‘Truly scandalous’: The Trump administration engaged in the “unconstitutional suppression of free speech” when federal immigration enforcement officials arrested and sought to deport international college students for their pro-Palestinian activism. | The Washington Post
    • A new PEN America report warns of a “disturbing normalization of censorship” in public schools where book bans have risen sharply in the last few years. The 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess topped the list. | NPR 
    • Lawrence, Kansas, school officials were accused of censoring high school journalists and intimidating their adviser in violation of state law after current and former students filed a federal lawsuit alleging the district’s use of a digital student surveillance tool violated their privacy and press freedom rights. | Student Press Law Center
      • The student activity monitoring tool Gaggle, which flags keywords like “kill” and “bomb,” “has helped our staff intervene and save lives,” the Lawrence district says. But students say the system subjected them to false allegations. | The Washington Post
      • The 74 throwback: Meet the gatekeepers of students’ private lives. | The 74

    ‘Places of care, not chaos’: California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law new rules that require federal immigration enforcement officers to show a warrant or court order before entering a school campus or questioning students. | EdSource

    Minnesota’s red flag gun law, which allows authorities to confiscate firearms from people with violent plans, has been used to prevent school shootings but its use is inconsistent, an investigation found. | The Minnesota Star Tribune

    A middle school boy from New York was arrested on allegations of catfishing classmates by impersonating a girl online, convincing male classmates to send him sexually revealing photographs and extorting them for cash or gift cards. | The New York Times

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    The Trump administration plans to overhaul a student loan forgiveness program for employees at nonprofits that officials claim are engaged in “illegal activities” — a justification that could be used to target organizations that serve immigrants and transgender youth. | The Associated Press

    A Michigan school district, where four elementary school girls said they were groped by a classmate on the playground, is accused of waiting eight days to report the incident to the police. | Lansing State Journal

    ICYMI @The74

    As the LGBTQ Youth Population Doubles, Number of Bills Targeting Them Triples

    Goblins AI Math Tutoring App Clones Your Teacher’s Looks and Voice

    From Screen Time to ‘Green Time’: Going Outside to Support Student Well-Being

    Emotional Support

    The 74 will meet for a company summit in Minneapolis next week. Matilda wasn’t invited, but she couldn’t care less.


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  • Preventing harm by connecting the dots in school safety

    Preventing harm by connecting the dots in school safety

    Key points:

    Swatting–false reports of school violence intended to trigger a police response–continues to increase across the country. During the 2022–2023 school year, nearly 64 percent of reported violent incidents in K–12 schools were linked to swatting. That’s over 440 incidents in one year–a more than 500 percent jump from just four years prior.

    Each call pulls officers from genuine emergencies, disrupts classrooms, and leaves students and staff shaken. While emergency protocols are essential, when swatting becomes routine, it’s clear that response plans alone won’t solve the problem.

    Unpacking the early signals

    Swatting rarely emerges out of thin air. It’s often the final act following a series of compounding behaviors, such as:

    • Online harassment
    • Peer conflicts
    • Risky social media challenges
    • Unaddressed behavioral concerns

    These warning signs exist, but are typically scattered across multiple school departments.

    Counselors might log escalating incidents. Teachers may notice changes in student behavior, and school resource officers (SROs) might track repeated visits involving the same individuals. Without a unified way to connect these observations, critical warning signs go unnoticed.

    Operationalizing early intervention

    Districts are reimagining how they capture and coordinate behavioral data. The goal isn’t surveillance or punitive action. It’s about empowering the right people with the right context to align and intervene early.

    When schools shift from viewing incidents in isolation to seeing behavior patterns in context, they are better positioned to act before concerns escalate. This can mean initiating mental health referrals, alerting safety teams, or involving families and law enforcement partners at the appropriate moment with comprehensive information.

    Technology that enables teams

    The process requires tools that support secure, centralized documentation and streamline communication across counselors, administrators, safety staff, and other stakeholders. These systems don’t replace human judgment, but create conditions for clearer decisions and more timely coordination.

    Swatting is just one example of how fragmented behavioral data can contribute to high-risk outcomes. Other incidents, such as escalating bullying, persistent mental health concerns, or anonymous threats often follow recognizable patterns that emerge over time. When schools use a centralized system to document and track these behaviors across departments, they can identify those patterns earlier. This kind of structured coordination supports proactive interventions, helping prevent larger issues before they unfold and reinforcing a culture of safety and awareness.

    Consider Washington State, where swatting affected more than 18,000 students last year, costing schools over $270,000 in lost instructional time. These figures illustrate the operational and human costs when coordination breaks down.

    Reducing risk, not just reacting to it

    Swatting is a symptom of a larger issue. Building safer schools means moving upstream from reactive emergency response to proactive coordination. It requires shared insight across teams, strengthened behavioral threat assessment protocols, and the right supports in place well before crisis calls occur.

    Early intervention isn’t about adding complexity. It’s about reducing risk, improving situational clarity, and equipping school communities to act with confidence–not simply responding when harm is imminent.

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  • L.A. Schools Telehealth Vendor Waited 8 Months to Report Breach – The 74

    L.A. Schools Telehealth Vendor Waited 8 Months to Report Breach – The 74

    School (in)Security is our biweekly briefing on the latest school safety news, vetted by Mark Keierleber. Subscribe here.

    It’s another hot summer Friday and another day with news about a data breach — this one jeopardizing both student health and campus safety data.

    And once again, the development is unfolding in the country’s second-largest school district.

    Kokomo Solutions, which the Los Angeles district contracts with to provide telehealth services to students during the school day and to track campus safety threats, disclosed a data breach after it discovered an “unauthorized third party” on its computer network. The discovery happened in December 2024, but the notice to the California attorney general’s office wasn’t made until Aug. 5.  

    It’s the latest in a series of data privacy incidents affecting L.A. schools, including a high-profile 2022 ransomware attack exposing students’ sensitive mental health records and last year’s collapse of a much-lauded $6 million artificial intelligence chatbot project. 

    In the news

    Students at the center of Trump’s D.C. police takeover: In an unprecedented federal power grab, the Trump administration’s seizure of the D.C. police department and National Guard deployment is designed to target several vulnerable groups — including kids. | NPR

    • The move comes at a time when crime in the nation’s capital is on the decline. But a deep-dive from June explores how the district’s failure to prevent student absences has contributed to “the biggest youth crime surge in a generation.” | The Washington Post
    • Here’s what young people have to say about Trump’s D.C. takeover. | NBC 4
    • City police will roll out a youth-specific curfew Friday in the Navy Yard neighborhood. | Fox 5

    A new Ohio law requires school districts to implement basic cybersecurity measures in response to heightened cyberattacks. What the law doesn’t do, however, is provide any money to carry out the new mandate. | WBNS 

    News in Trump’s immigration crackdown: A federal judge in Minnesota has released from immigration detention a nursing 25-year-old mother, allowing her to return to her children as her case works its way through the court. | The Minnesota Star Tribune 

    • The Trump administration has revived one of its most controversial immigration policies from the president’s first term: Separating families. | The New York Times
    • Federal immigration officials quizzed an Idaho school resource officer about an unaccompanied migrant student, part of a broader national effort to conduct “welfare checks” on immigrant youth who came to the U.S. without their parents. | InvestigateWest
    • Leading Oklahoma Republican lawmakers have partnered with the Trump administration in a lawsuit challenging a state law allowing undocumented students to receive in-state college tuition. | InsideHigherEd
    • Los Angeles community members have organized to create protective perimeters around the city’s campuses after immigration agents reportedly drew their guns on a student outside a high school. | Los Angeles Times
      • The district announced new bus routes designed to improve student safety while commuting to school during heightened immigration enforcement. | NBC 4
    • The nonprofit Southwest Key, which for years has been the federal government’s largest provider of shelters for unaccompanied migrant children, has laid off thousands in Texas and Arizona after losing federal grants. The Trump administration dropped a lawsuit in March over allegations the nonprofit subjected migrant children to widespread sexual abuse. | ABC 15
    • A Texas court blocked the state attorney general’s request to depose and question a nun who leads Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, one of the largest migrant aid groups in the region. | The Texas Tribune
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    Microphone-equipped sensors installed in school bathrooms to crack down on student vaping could be hacked, researchers revealed, and turned into secret listening devices. | Wired

    ‘These are innocent children, sir’: New video of the delayed police response to the 2022 mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, shows the campus police chief attempting to negotiate with the gunman for more than 30 minutes. | The New York Times

    Kansas schools have become the latest target in the Trump administration’s campaign against districts that permit transgender students to participate in school athletics. | KCTV

    • The Loudoun County, Virginia, school board has refused to comply with an Education Department order to end a policy allowing transgender students to use restroom facilities that match their gender identity. | LoudounNow 
    • The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has opened an investigation into allegations the Baltimore school district ignored antisemetic harassment by students and educators. | The Baltimore Banner

    Lots of drills — little evidence: A congressionally mandated report finds that active shooter drills vary widely across the country — making it difficult to understand their effect on mental and emotional health. | National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

    A federal judge has blocked a new Arkansas law requiring that public schools display the Ten Commandments in all classrooms. It’s the second state Ten Commandments law to be halted this year. | Axios 

    ICYMI: I did a deep-dive into the far-right Christian nationalists behind more than two dozen state Ten Commandments-in-schools bills nationally — each of which are inherently identical. | The 74

    Is Texas up next? Civil rights groups will ask a judge on Friday to prevent a similar law from going into effect. | Houston Chronicle

    ICYMI @The74

    Despite Court Order, Education Department’s Civil Rights Staff Still On Leave

    ‘So Many Threats to Kids’: ICE Fear Grips Los Angeles at Start of New School Year

    Emotional Support

    Don’t sleep on this Bloomberg feature into “Doodlemania” — the billion-dollar industry for hypoallergenic (and floofy!) designer pups.


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  • How a Christian Nationalist Group is Getting the Ten Commandments into Classrooms – The 74

    How a Christian Nationalist Group is Getting the Ten Commandments into Classrooms – The 74

    School (in)Security is our biweekly briefing on the latest school safety news, vetted by Mark Keierleber. Subscribe here.

    As far-right political operative David Barton leads a Christian nationalist crusade, he’s traveled to state capitols across the country this year to support dozens of bills requiring Ten Commandments displays in classrooms. 

    My latest story digs into a well-coordinated and deep-pocketed campaign to inject Protestant Christianity into public schools that could carry broader implications for students’ First Amendment rights. Through a data analysis of 28 bills that have cropped up across 18 states this year, I show how Barton’s role runs far deeper than just being their primary pitchman.

    The analysis reveals how the language, structure and requirements of these bills nationwide are inherently identical. Time and again, state legislation took language verbatim from a Barton-led lobbying blitz to reshape the nation’s laws around claims — routinely debunked — about Christianity’s role in the country’s founding and its early public education system. 

    Three new state laws in Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas mandating Ten Commandments posters in public schools are designed to challenge a 1980 Supreme Court ruling against such government-required displays in classrooms. GOP state lawmakers embracing these laws have expressed support for eradicating the separation of church and state — a pursuit critics fear will coerce students and take away their own religious freedom.

    In the news

    Updates to Trump’s immigration crackdown: Immigration and Customs Enforcement has released from custody a 6-year-old boy with leukemia more than a month after he and his family were sent to a rural Texas detention center. | Slate

    • As the Department of Homeland Security conducts what it calls wellness checks on unaccompanied minors, the young people who migrated to the U.S. without their parents “are just terrified.” | Bloomberg
    • ‘It looks barbaric’: Video footage purportedly shows some two dozen children in federal immigration custody handcuffed and shackled in a Los Angeles parking garage. | Santa Cruz Sentinel
    • The Department of Homeland Security is investigating surveillance camera footage purportedly showing federal immigration officers urinating on the grounds of a Pico Rivera, California, high school in broad daylight. | CBS News
    • California sued the Trump administration after it withheld some $121 million in education funds for a program designed to help the children of migrant farmworkers catch up academically. | EdSource
    • Undocumented children will be banned from enrolling in federally funded Head Start preschools, the Trump administration announced. | The Washington Post
      • Legal pushback: Parents, Head Start providers challenge new rule barring undocumented families. | The 74
    Getty Images

    The executive director of Camp Mystic in Texas didn’t begin evacuations for more than an hour after he received a severe flood warning from the National Weather Service. The ensuing tragedy killed 27 counselors and campers. | The Washington Post

    The day after the Supreme Court allowed the Education Department’s dismantling, Secretary Linda McMahon went ahead with plans to move key programs. | The 74 

    • Now, with fewer staff, the Office for Civil Rights is pursuing a smaller caseload. During a three-month period between March and June, the agency dismissed 3,424 civil rights complaints. | Politico
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    Massachusetts legislation seeks to ban anyone under the age of 18 from working in the state’s seafood processing facilities after an investigation exposed the factories routinely employed migrant youth in unsafe conditions. | The Public’s Radio

    An end to a deadly trend: School shootings decreased 22% during the 2024-25 school year compared to a year earlier after reaching all-time highs for three years in a row. | K-12 Dive

    Florida is the first state to require all high school student athletes to undergo electrocardiograms in a bid to detect heart conditions. | WUSF 

    The Senate dropped rules from Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax-and-spending bill that would have prevented states from regulating artificial intelligence tools, including those used in schools. | The Verge

    • Food stamps are another matter: The federal SNAP program will be cut by about a fifth over the next decade, taking away at least some nutrition benefits from at least 800,000 low-income children. | The 74

    ICYMI @The74

    Getty Images

    Supreme Court to Address Legality of Barring Trans Athletes From School Sports

    Medicaid Cuts in Trump Tax Bill Spark Fears for Child Health, School Services

    Heinous, heartbreaking — and expensive. California schools face avalanche of sex abuse claims

    Emotional Support

    74 editor Nicole Ridgway’s dog Mika is cooler than your dog.


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  • Trump’s Deportation Database Puts Students at Risk – The 74

    Trump’s Deportation Database Puts Students at Risk – The 74

    School (in)Security is our biweekly briefing on the latest school safety news, vetted by Mark Keierleber. Subscribe here.

    Tennessee state Sen. Bo Watson wants to eject undocumented students from public school classrooms. But first, he needs their data. 

    Watson seeks to require students statewide to submit a birth certificate or other sensitive documents to secure their seats — one of numerous efforts nationwide this year as Republican state lawmakers seek to challenge a decades-old Supreme Court precedent enshrining students’ right to a free public education regardless of their immigration status.

    Some 300 demonstrators participate in a Waukegan, Illinois, rally on Feb. 1 to draw attention to an increase in Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in the area. Privacy advocates warn student records could be used to assist deportations. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

    In my latest feature this week, I dive into why those efforts have alarmed student data privacy advocates, who warn that efforts to compile data on immigrant students could be used not just to deny them an education  — it could also fall into the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

    As the Trump administration ramps up deportations and tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency reportedly works to create a “master database” of government records to zero in on migrants, data privacy experts warn that state and federal data about immigrant students could be weaponized. 

    In the news

    Cybercriminals demanded ransom payments from school districts nationwide this week, using millions of K-12 students’ sensitive data as leverage after the files were stolen from education technology giant PowerSchool in a massive cyberattack late last year. The development undercuts PowerSchool’s decision to pay a ransom in December to keep the sensitive documents under wraps. | The 74

    Gutted: Investigations at the Education Department’s civil rights office have trickled to a halt as the Trump administration installs a “shadow division” to advance cases that align with the president’s agenda. | ProPublica

    • Civil rights groups, students and parents have asked courts to block the Education Department’s civil rights enforcement changes under Trump, saying they fail to hold schools accountable for racial harassment and abuses against children with disabilities. | K-12 Dive
    • Among the thousands of cases put on the back burner is a complaint from a Texas teenager who was kneed in the face by a campus cop. | The 74

    ‘The hardest case for mercy’: Congratulations to Marshall Project contributor Joe Sexton, who was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his reporting on a legal team’s successful bid to spare the Parkland, Florida, school shooter from the death penalty. | The Marshall Project

    The city council in Uvalde, Texas, approved a $2 million settlement with the families of the victims in the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School, the first lawsuit to end with monetary payouts since 19 children and two teachers were killed. | Insurance Journal 

    • In Michigan, a state commission created in the wake of the 2021 school shooting at Oxford High School, which resulted in the deaths of four students, issued a final report calling for additional funding to strengthen school mental health supports. | Chalkbeat
    • Meanwhile, at the federal level, the Education Department axed $1 billion in federal grants designed to train mental health professionals and place them in schools in a bid to thwart mass shootings. | The 74

    A high school substitute teacher in Ohio was arrested on accusations she offered a student $2,000 to murder her husband. | WRIC

    Connecticut schools have been forced to evacuate from fires caused by a “dangerous TikTok trend” where students stab school-issued laptops with paper clips to cause electrical short circuits. | WFSB

    Eleven high school lacrosse players in upstate New York face unlawful imprisonment charges on accusations they staged a kidnapping of younger teammates who thought they were being abducted by armed assailants. | CNN

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    The Future of Privacy Forum has “retired” its Student Privacy Pledge after a decade. The pledge, which was designed to ensure education technology companies were ethical stewards of students’ sensitive data, was ended due to “the changing technological and policy landscape regarding education technology.” | Future of Privacy Forum

    • The pledge had previously faced scrutiny over its ability to hold tech vendors accountable for violating its terms. | The 74
    • New kid on the block: Almost simultaneously, Common Sense Privacy launched a “privacy seal certification” to recognize vendors that are “deeply committed to privacy.” | Business Wire

    Google plans to roll out an artificial intelligence chatbot for children as the tech giant seeks to attract young eyeballs to its AI products. | The New York Times

    Kansas schools plan to spend state money on AI tools to spot guns despite concerns over reports of false alarms. | Beacon Media

    ICYMI @The74

    A new report from the Department of Health and Human Services suggests gender-affirming health care puts transgender youth at risk but the report ignores years of research indicating otherwise. (Getty Images)

    HHS Condemns Gender-Affirming Care in Report That Finds ‘Sparse’ Evidence of Harm

    Chicago Public Schools’ Black Student Success Plan Under Investigation Over DEI

    SCOTUS to Rule in Case That Could Upend Enforcement of Disabled Students’ Rights

    Emotional Support

    Birds are chirping. Flowers are blooming. And 74 editor Bev Weintraub’s feline Marz is ready to pounce.


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  • Amazon Doc Probes Student Surveillance Harms – The 74

    Amazon Doc Probes Student Surveillance Harms – The 74

    School (in)Security is our biweekly briefing on the latest school safety news, vetted by Mark Keierleber. Subscribe here.

    It all began when school officials mistook a blurry image of a Mike and Ike candy for pills. 

    Pennsylvania teenager Blake Robbins found himself at the center of a digital surveillance controversy that gave rise to student privacy debates amid schools’ growing reliance on ed tech. 

    Spy High, a four-part documentary series streaming now on Amazon Prime, puts the focus on a lawsuit filed in 2010 after Robbins’ affluent Pennsylvania school district accused him of dealing drugs — a conclusion officials reached after they surreptitiously snapped a photo of him at home with the chewy candy in hand. 

    Blake Robbins, then a high school student in Pennsylvania’s affluent Lower Merion School District, speaks to the press about his 2010 lawsuit alleging covert digital surveillance by educators. (Unrealistic Ideas)

    The moment had been captured on the webcam of his school-issued laptop — one of some 66,000 covert student images collected by the district, including one of Robbins asleep in his bed. 

    I caught up with Spy High Director Jody McVeigh-Schultz to discuss why the 15-year-old case offers cautionary lessons about student surveillance gone awry and how it informs contemporary student privacy debates. 

    How student surveillance plays out today: Meet the gatekeepers of students’ private lives. | The 74

    In the news

    Courts block DEI directive: Three federal courts ordered temporary halts on Thursday to Trump’s efforts to cancel student diversity initiatives — and demands for states to pledge allegiance to the administration’s interpretation of civil rights laws. | The 74

    President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that called for school discipline models “rooted in American values and traditional virtues,” taking aim at Obama- and Biden-era efforts to reduce racial disparities in suspensions and expulsions. | Politico

    U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks about a new autism study during a news conference on April 16, 2025. (Getty Images)

    ‘The history there is deeply, deeply disturbed’: Disability-rights advocates have decried plans at the National Institutes of Health to compile Amerians’ private medical records in a “disease registry” to track children and other people with autism. | The 74

    • Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., faced criticism for recent comments that many kids “were fully functional and regressed because of some environmental exposure into autism when they’re 2 years old.” | ABC News

    A new lawsuit filed by students at military-run schools accuses the Defense Department of harming their learning opportunities by banning books related to “gender ideology” or “divisive equity ideology,” including texts that refer to slavery and sexual harassment prevention. | Military Times

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    California lawmakers are demanding answers after Department of Homeland Security agents visited two Los Angeles elementary schools and asked to speak with five students who the federal agency said “arrived unaccompanied at the border.” | LAist

    ‘We all deserve reparations’: White House aide Stephen Miller said in an interview last week the country “used to have a functioning public school system” until it was destroyed by “open borders.” | The New Republic

    The Justice Department seized thousands of photos and videos in an investigation of a former University of Michigan assistant football coach who was indicted on allegations he hacked into student athletes’ private accounts to steal intimate images. | CBS Sports

    A 48-year-old mother was arrested and accused of bringing a gun to her daughter’s Indiana elementary school and threatening the girl’s teacher over a classroom assignment about flags. While discussing flags, the teacher reportedly referred to a rainbow flag in the classroom with the words “be kind.” | NBC News

    Banning ‘frontal nudity’: A Texas school district has removed lessons on Virginia history from an online learning platform for elementary school students because the commonwealth’s flag depicts the Roman goddess Virtus with an exposed breast. | Axios

    The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments next month to weigh Trump’s executive order eliminating birthright citizenship, bringing into question a 127-year-old court precedent. | NPR

    A class-action lawsuit accuses tech giant Google of amassing “thousands of data points that span a child’s life” without the consent of students or their parents. | Bloomberg Law

    A Florida teacher is out of a job after she called a student by their preferred name, allegedly violating a 2023 Florida law that requires schools to receive parental permission to refer to students by anything other than their legal names. | Click Orlando

    The vice president of the Buffalo, New York, chapter of Bikers Against Child Abuse was arrested and accused of sex crimes against children. | WIVB

    ICYMI @The74

    Supreme Court Shows Support for Parents Who Want Opt-Outs from LGBTQ Storybooks

    ‘There Goes My Son’s Help:’ Wave of Washington Head Starts Shut Down as Chaos Engulfs Federal Program

    State Officials Sue Trump Administration for Halting COVID School Aid

    Protecting Children Online Takes Technology, Human Oversight and Accountability

    Emotional Support

    Don’t even think about touching Matilda’s cactus.


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  • PowerSchool Got Hacked. Now What? – The 74

    PowerSchool Got Hacked. Now What? – The 74


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    Were you a current or former student in the last few decades? Or a parent? Or an educator? 

    If so, your sensitive data — like Social Security numbers and medical records — may have fallen into the hands of cybercriminals. Their target was education technology behemoth PowerSchool, which provides a centralized system for reams of student data to damn near every school in America.

    Given the cyberattack’s high stakes and its potential to harm millions of current and former students, I teamed up Wednesday with Doug Levin of the K12 Security Information eXchange to moderate a timely webinar about what happened, who was affected — and the steps school districts must take to keep their communities safe.

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    Concern about the PowerSchool breach is clearly high: Some 600 people tuned into the live event at one point and pummeled Levin and panelists Wesley Lombardo, technology director at Tennessee’s Maryville City Schools; Mark Racine, co-founder of RootED Solutions; and Amelia Vance, president of the Public Interest Privacy Center, with questions. 

    PowerSchool declined our invitation to participate but sent a statement, saying it is “working to complete our investigation of the incident and [is] coordinating with districts and schools to provide more information and resources (including credit monitoring or identity protection services if applicable) as it becomes available.”

    The individual or group who hacked the ed tech giant has yet to be publicly identified.

    Asked and answered: Why has the company’s security safeguards faced widespread scrutiny? What steps should parents take to keep their kids’ data secure? Will anyone be held accountable?

    Watch the webinar here.

    In the news

    Oklahoma schools Superintendent Ryan Walters, who says undocumented immigrants have placed “severe financial and operational strain” on schools in his state, proposed rules requiring parents to show proof of citizenship or legal immigration status when enrolling their kids — a proposal that not only violates federal law, but is likely to keep some parents from sending their children to school. | The 74

    • Not playing along: Leaders of the state’s two largest school districts — Oklahoma City and Tulsa — rebuked the proposal and said they would not collect students’ immigration information. Educators nationwide fear the incoming Trump administration could carry out arrests on campuses. | Oklahoma Watch
       
    • Walters filed a $474 million federal lawsuit this week alleging immigration enforcement officials mismanaged the U.S.-Mexico border, leading to “skyrocketing costs” for Oklahoma schools required “to accommodate an influx of non-citizen students.” | The Oklahoman
       
    • Timely resource guide: With ramped-up immigration enforcement on the horizon — and with many schools already sharing student information with ICE — here are the steps school administrators must take to comply with longstanding privacy and civil rights laws. | Center for Democracy & Technology

    A federal judge in Kentucky struck down the Biden administration’s Title IX rules that enshrined civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ students in schools, siding with several conservative state attorneys general who argued that harassment of transgender students based on their gender identity doesn’t constitute sex discrimination. Mother Jones

    Fires throw L.A. schools into chaos: As fatal wildfires rage in California, the students and families of America’s second-largest school district have had their lives thrown into disarray. Schools serving thousands of students were badly damaged or destroyed. Many children have lost their homes. Hundreds of kids whose schools burned down returned to makeshift classrooms Wednesday after losing “their whole lifestyle in a matter of hours.” | The Washington Post 

    • At least seven public schools in Los Angeles that were destroyed, damaged or threatened by flames will remain closed, along with campuses in other districts. | The 74

    Has TikTok’s time run out? With a national ban looming for the popular social media app, many teens say they’re ready to move on (and have already flocked to a replacement). | Business Insider

    Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta restricted LGBTQ+-related content from teens’ accounts for months under its so-called sensitive content policy until the effort was exposed by journalist Taylor Lorenz. | Fast Company

    Students’ lunch boxes sit in a locker at California’s Marquez Charter Elementary School, which was destroyed by the Palisades fire on Jan. 7. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

    The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday announced the participants in a $200 million pilot program to help schools and libraries bolster their cybersecurity defenses. They include 645 schools and districts and 50 libraries. | FCC

    Scholastic falls to “furry” hackers: The education and publishing giant that brought us Harry Potter has fallen victim to a cyberattacker, who reportedly stole the records of some 8 million people. In an added twist, the culprit gave a shout-out to “the puppygirl hacker polycule,” an apparent reference to a hacker dating group interested in human-like animal characters. | Daily Dot

    Not just in New Jersey: In a new survey, nearly a quarter of teachers said their schools are patrolled by drones and a third said their schools have surveillance cameras with facial recognition capabilities. | Center for Democracy & Technology

    The number of teens abstaining from drugs, alcohol and tobacco use has hit record highs, with experts calling the latest data unprecedented and unexpected. | Ars Technica

    ICYMI @The74

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    Feds: Philadelphia Schools Failed to Address Antisemitism in School, Online

    Emotional Support

    New pup just dropped.

    Meet Woodford, who, at just 9 weeks, has already aged like a fine bourbon. I’m told that Woody — and the duck, obviously — have come under the good care of 74 reporter Linda Jacobson’s daughter.


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