Last week, Dr. Feltre sent an email to parents regarding the Raptor Visitor Management System.  A quick google of the Raptor Technologies company reveals that this company is not trustworthy when it comes to securing our schools and our personal data.  Millions of school records were exposed including school safety plans, lockdown procedures and personal information less than eighteen months ago.  What other data has the Berkeley Heights Public Schools shared with this company?   Has our data already been breached and we haven’t been told yet?  Is this another PowerSchool breach waiting to happen?

Mandating that parents submit their entire identification to a third party vendor is not acceptable.  Forcing parents to submit their name, address, birthdate, Drivers License number, signature, gender, height, eye color and photo to a company that has already demonstrated they cannot be trusted with our data is a violation of our privacy and a security risk to all of our families.  Submitting all of this data is asking for your identity to be stolen.  Once your identity is compromised, it is a lifelong problem that cannot be simply resolved with an apology or a few months of online monitoring by another company.

Lastly, the lack of transparency about these changes continues the prior administrations pattern of not communicating with parents and trying to ram through changes without the community’s consent or knowledge.  Sending the letter during a break reduces the visibility of the letter, leaving parents uninformed about the changes and unprepared to respond with their concerns.  I strongly encourage our new leadership to not follow the prior administration’s patterns and actions.

I have included links about the data breach to further verify my concerns listed above.   The first article in particular reviews the data that was compromised and it is remarkably similar to the PowerSchool breach late in 2024.

https://www.twingate.com/blog/tips/Raptor-data-breach

https://www.edweek.org/technology/a-massive-data-leak-exposed-school-lockdown-plans-what-districts-need-to-know/2024/01

Respectfully,

Michael Leblond