Parents, students and staff were notified by phone and texts that technical teams needed time on Tuesday to finish "critical testing" of district infrastructure. Calls went out Saturday night, telling families about the incident and canceling Monday's classes. Cancellations abut the district's spring break, and students have been out of school since March 22.
Superintendent John VanWagoner said there was no hack, no breach nor a leak of personal information or students, parents, or staff.
They detected the disruption late Thursday night/Friday morning, and after tracking it, "we determined it was best to shut everything down to be safe," VanWagoner said. The district engaged a third-party cybersecurity firm and IT personnel "worked through Easter Sunday to make sure everything could get back on track," he said.
Classes will resume Wednesday after the two-day cancellation.
Closing the schools was about more than whether or not teaching can be done without the Internet, VanWagoner said — it's about making sure security measures are meeting standards, as well as the fact that so many devices in the buildings use the network to function properly.
"We have phones that use the network, security devices, not to mention all of the personal information that we have to protect," he said.
Such disruptions aren't uncommon, he added. K-12 institutions reported 753,000 students were affected by cyber attacks in 2019. In 2020, that number went up to almost 1.2 million students, according to a recent U.S. Government Accountability Office analysis of a Comparitech study.
As more school districts became more heavily dependent on technology during COVID-19, they became a natural target for hackers looking to hold a district ransom.
Higher education institutions have experienced cyber threats as well. In August 2023, University of Michigan staff were forced to shut down the school's network connections in response to a "significant [cyber] security concern" just before the academic year started, according to a statement from the university.
VanWagoner said he was grateful the shutdown protocol was in place before something more serious happened.
"There's no reason to believe any sensitive or personal information was leaked, but if that was the case, we would certainly notify students and parents immediately," VanWagoner said. "We're going to be just fine."
©2024 The Record-Eagle (Traverse City, Mich.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
