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Decatur Public Schools Back to Paper During Internet Outage

An Internet outage is affecting all networks at a public school district in Illinois, complicated by the 1:1 device plan the district typically relies upon. Teachers and students are back to pencils and papers this week.

A wooden sign saying "No Internet."
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(TNS) — Decatur Public Schools have been without reliable Internet this week.

The ongoing issue resulted in Friday classes at Eisenhower High School being canceled. Other buildings are open.

"It started with a Comcast reboot or something that they did," said Superintendent Rochelle Clark. "It kind of affected all of our networks. So right now we're in the process of rebooting everything and getting everyone back up and running, so we've been having some erratic issues."

The district, she said, has been one-to-one with devices for every student, which makes Internet issues a challenge, though it hasn't stopped classroom learning. It has just required that teachers and students go back to the old ways of pencil and paper instead of relying on technology.

"Now we're having to revert back to the way it was when we started teaching," she said. "It hasn't stopped the educational process. We can live without the technology for a little bit."

© 2025 the Herald & Review (Decatur, Ill.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.