Technology issues plaguing schools district-wide left Pine View without computer and network access on Oct. 21.
At 10:30 a.m., Principal Dr. Stephen Covert reported that a virus had been detected and instructed all classes to turn off all devices connected to the school’s Wi-Fi network. “We have been impacted,” Covert said.
According to an automated message sent to school faculty, shutting down district computers avoided the loss of any student or business data. “The precaution was taken to prevent the possible loss of data from hard drives,” the message said, “It was not related to any outside party attempting to access the district system.”
Messages to district faculty and families lacked any mention of the issue’s cause.
Internet access was restored on Oct. 22, but “district email and learning management systems” continued to be unavailable, the message said. All systems were available by Oct. 23.
The shutdown disrupted classrooms normally reliant upon technology. “We could not use computers in class and had to write out some assignments, which was time consuming,” said ninth-grader Slynia Shi.
“I had planned to do an interactive activity with computers that day, but I had to put it off until later,” said math teacher David Nezelek.
The Torch has been repeatedly unsuccessful in attempting to make contact with district technology coordinators. We will continuing to investigate the source of the outage and will provide more information upon acquiring it.
Story by ZACH BRIGHT and ALEX WOELFFER