RACINE — For the past week, students and staff within the Racine Unified School District (RUSD) have been wondering why they’ve been forced offline.
RUSD tells TMJ4 News an “issue that impacted the operability of its network environment” was detected. Staff is now investigating to “determine the nature and extent of the issue and working to restore impacted systems as quickly as possible.”
Parents are left feeling disconnected.
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“If it’s the whole district, what is going on? That concerns me,” said Joan Larson, a grandmother who TMJ4’s Ryan Jenkins met as she was picking up her grandchildren from Roosevelt Elementary School.
The week-long internet outage happened on the final week before the district’s winter recess.
“If it’s an actual cyber attack or anything like that, let parents know so we can be aware of it because it can spread anywhere,” said Joshua Stinson, a father who has two students at RUSD schools.
While some brush off the technology issues, posting on social media with comments like, “A lot of us went to school before the internet was invented,” others are sharing concerns with comments like, “It’s a safety issue.”
Watch: Parents want answers as ‘technology issues’ persist in Racine schools
Parents raise concerns over ongoing school technology issues in Racine
One woman asked TMJ4 News for updates saying the entire situation, “feels odd.”
TMJ4 Lighthouse Reporter Ryan Jenkins spent a week trying to ask for more information from RUSD’s communications team.
“It’s like ok it’s been a week and they’re saying well ‘it’s just something is going wrong’ but really what we heard is it’s a hack — and as parents, we hear things too,” said Stinson.
RUSD spokesperson Stacy Tapp has only released the following statement:
“RUSD detected an issue that impacted the operability of its network environment. We are currently investigating to determine the nature and extent of the issue and working to restore impacted systems as quickly as possible. As our investigation into this matter is ongoing, we are unable to provide further details. We are grateful for our amazing teachers and support staff who have pivoted, as they do so well, to keep teaching and learning happening in our schools. And we thank our community for your patience as we work to resolve these issues.”
When Jenkins specifically asked whether the network had been hacked or attacked, he was told RUSD was unable to provide additional details.
Attempts to reach the Board of Education’s president were unsuccessful on Friday.
Racine Police Department and the Racine County Sheriff’s Office both say they are not investigating the technology issues.
The FBI would not confirm whether an investigation was underway and sharedthese tips for protecting yourself from Ransomware threats.
Still without answers, TMJ4 turned to cybersecurity expert Alex Holden, who owns Hold Security.
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“Overtime we trust our schools with more and more information and it’s all getting computerized,” said Holden. “So, over time we start storing more information including personal information of faculty and students, including some reports about children’s health or other conditions and obviously grades and other information.”
Holden said that while cyber threats are always concerning, those involving minors can be even more distressing.
“We’ve seen cases where the bad guys take children’s information much further than what would be conscionable,” he said.
Holden points out that since RUSD kept schools open over the past week, there is likely no physical safety threat to worry about.
“If there’s a physical threat, schools would react differently, at least in my experience. But, if there is a cyber-threat we may learn later on what actually happened,” he said.
Parents and teachers tell TMJ4 they want to know what is causing these technology issues and whether any of their personal sensitive data is at risk.
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