Data Breach Impacts More Than 18,000 Valley View Students, Staff

BOLINGBROOK, IL — A week after news broke of a similar data breach affecting Naperville school districts, Valley View announced it has been informed that some data — namely the first and last names and potentially dates of birth — for roughly 18,000 current and former students may have been compromised.

"Valley View Public School District was recently notified by Pearson Clinical Assessment that they experienced a data security incident involving some of VVSD’s current and former students," the district said in a statement Wednesday. "Although Pearson has no reason to believe that any data has been misused, VVSD is making the community aware of this incident out of an abundance of caution."

According to Valley View Pearson estimates that 13,000 schools nationwide — including nearby Naperville districts 203 and 204 — were impacted an event in which an unauthorized third party accessed records of a product called AIMSweb 1.0. Valley View used that product to track academic progress of students in kindergarten through eighth grade until use was discontinued in 2016.

Pearson believes that the first name, last name, and in some cases, date of birth of approximately 18,000 Valley View that time was exposed.

"No test scores, performance data or any other identifying student information were part of this incident," Valley View said. "The exposed data also included the names and district issued email addresses of 1,700 staff members. This staff member information is directory information already available on our website and is defined as public records."

Valley View said Pearson informed the district that as a precautionary measure, the company is providing free credit monitoring services to affected individuals. To enroll, VVSD families and staff can contact Alberto Diaz, information security officer, at iso@vvsd.org.

"Valley View School District understands its responsibility to safeguard student and staff personal information," the district said. " VVSD has policies and other safeguards in place to ensure personal information of all student and staff stored on our systems is protected. Valley View School District places these same obligations on all third parties entrusted with student or staff personal information by requiring they meet a number of requirements to ensure the safety of all sensitive data."