Hackers accessed personal information of students and teachers nationwide
SAN DIEGO, May 12, 2025 -- A lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Memphis-Shelby County Schools against PowerSchool, a software provider popular at K-12 schools. The suit, filed by Frantz Law Group in federal court, includes allegations of negligence, breach of contract and false advertising in connection with a major hacking incident in December 2024.
The plaintiff is a Tennessee public school district serving more than 110,000 students at 222 schools spanning pre-kindergarten through high school. The defendant is PowerSchool Holdings Inc., which collects and maintains highly sensitive personal identifiable information for more than 60 million students, parents, and school faculty worldwide.
Hackers stole student and teacher data from PowerSchool in late December, but school districts were not notified of the data breach for nearly two weeks. PowerSchool has acknowledged it paid a ransom to the hackers, but it is possible that personal information about students and parents has or will be sold on the dark web. There have been recent reports of hackers directly extorting school districts who are PowerSchool users.
Memphis-Shelby County Schools has paid more than $21 million to PowerSchool over the last 12 years for its services, relying on its promises to keep their data secure. "PowerSchool failed to uphold its end of the bargain to safeguard and protect students' personal information," said William Shinoff, trial attorney, Frantz Law Group.
"The education community reasonably relied on PowerSchool's claims of privacy and security, but the software provider breached numerous contractual and legal duties it owed Memphis-Shelby schools and other districts across the country," said Shinoff, whose Law Group is representing numerous districts nationwide in this litigation.
Names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and phone numbers were among the information hackers obtained from PowerSchool. The lawsuit claims that the software provider failed to implement basic cybersecurity measures that could have prevented the data breach.
Actual and compensable damages caused by PowerSchool's negligence include expenses associated with handling the concerns of students and staff who suffered the theft of their personal information, and the lost time and money incurred to mitigate and remediate the effects of the data breach.
The suit against PowerSchool Holdings was filed in U.S. District Court Southern California. PowerSchool is headquartered in Folsom, California.
About Frantz Law Group
Frantz Law Group is an award-winning personal injury, wrongful death, catastrophic injury, trucking litigation, mass tort, and class action law firm that has been serving clients for over 45 years. The firm has secured over 300 multimillion-dollar individual settlements and jury verdicts and has worked with other law firms to secure several multibillion-dollar settlements that benefited thousands of clients.
Frantz Law Group has been ranked Tier 1 in U.S. News – Best Lawyers® "Best Law Firms" from 2010-2023 for mass tort litigation/class actions - plaintiffs. James P. Frantz is a fellow and associate of the American Board of Trial Advocates, is AV® rated by Martindale-Hubbell®, is a 20-year Special Master appointed by the State Bar of California and a 20-year Master in The Enright Chapter, American Inns of Court. For more information, please visit https://www.frantzlawgroup.com
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