The Los Gatos-Saratoga Union High School District, which runs Saratoga High and Los Gatos High, is suing Instructure, the company behind the Canvas learning platform, over a data breach this spring that knocked the system offline for schools around the country.
Trustees voted 4-0 at their Oct. 1 meeting to join a mass action led by Frantz Law Group, the Los Gatan reported this week. Each district in the action files its own case and receives its own settlement offer or result. The firm is working on contingency, so the district pays nothing up front; Frantz would keep 30% of any recovery, below its usual 40%.
Both high schools use Canvas to collect and grade assignments.
What happened
According to the Los Gatan's account, the hacking group ShinyHunters got into Instructure's systems on April 25, and the company did not learn of it until April 29, when a ransom demand arrived. On May 7, Canvas users across the country found themselves locked out and facing a message from the hackers pressing schools to negotiate privately before May 12.
Instructure said the day before that deadline that it had paid a ransom; it did not say how much.
The company has said the hackers returned data on about 275 million users at more than 8,800 institutions and that it received digital confirmation the data had been destroyed, while acknowledging there is "never complete certainty" when dealing with criminals. The exposed records included names, email addresses, student ID numbers, course and enrollment details and user messages.