PowerSchool Offers Identity Monitoring in Wake of Data Breach

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Families of school-children concerned about the PowerSchool data breach announced last year can sign up for two years of free identity monitoring services paid for by the school information system vendor.
 
Mount Greylock Regional School interim Superintendent Joseph Bergeron mentioned the offer at last week's meeting of the School Committee and said he was hoping to spread the word through as many channels as possible.
 
"We have plenty of folks whose emails have changed," Bergeron said, pointing out the difficulty in reaching every former student or staff member who could have been affected by the data breach.
 
Bergeron said a link has been added to the district’s website to connect people directly to PowerSchool to sign up for the complementary identity monitoring.
 
The PowerSchool website explained that the service is available regardless of whether an individual's data was part of the breach:
 
"PowerSchool is offering complimentary identity protection services including, if applicable, credit monitoring services, for involved students and educators, regardless of whether an individual’s Social Security Number/Social Insurance Number was exfiltrated. In countries outside of the U.S. and Canada where the provider provides such services, PowerSchool is offering two years of complimentary identity protection services for all students and educators whose information was involved, regardless of what information about an individual was exfiltrated."

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Williamstown Select Board Finalizes Property Tax Relief Measure for Town Meeting

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Select Board last week finalized a request to town meeting to change the parameters of a property tax relief program for residents aged 60 and over.
 
At last year's annual town meeting, members approved a proposal to lower the age of eligibility from 65 to 60 for the 41C senior exemption, which gives eligible residents a break of $1,000 on their property tax bills.
 
In order to open the program to more residents, the Select Board this year wants voters to okay increases to the income limit and asset limit for eligibility.
 
Currently in town, the income limits are $21,846 for a single person and $32,769 for a married couple. The asset maximums are $43,692 for a single person and $60,076 for a couple.
 
At its March 9 meeting, the four members of the board agreed those numbers should be raised from the current thresholds but could not agree on where to set the new limit.
 
Peter Beck had volunteered to come back to the March 23 session with some proposals based on his research. He reported last Monday that after looking at other income- and asset-restricted programs at the state and federal level, he found a variety of limits.
 
"I think all the numbers we were looking at a couple of weeks ago are reasonable," Beck said. "They're all backed up by some kind of program. … I'd propose doubling [Williamstown's income limit] which gets us to about 50 percent of the area median income: $44,000 for a single person, $66,000 for married.
 
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