Park Hill School District grade six through 12 students finally will return back to full in-person learning today, Wednesday, March 24, two days after they were supposed to return. Schools were closed due to a malware attack on Sunday, March 20.
Park Hill School District Superintendent Dr. Jeanette Cowherd met with the media on Monday, March 22, to talk about a malware attack that shut down the district.
District officials met with the media Monday morning at the district’s offices on Barry Road after all school had been canceled for the day; a move that wasn’t made until 6:20 a.m. At the time of the press conference the district was still unsure if it would be able to have school on Tuesday which ultimately it did not. Students and parents were notified Monday night there would be no school on Tuesday.
Park Hill Superintendent Dr. Jeanette Cowherd apologized for calling off school at such a late hour.
“I’m so disappointed this happened and truly would not want to ever have to cancel school that late,” Cowherd said. “That’s a horrible thing to do for our families and I cannot say enough good things about my families and our staff and the way they have rallied this morning to support us and to care for us.”
Cowherd said with such a late decision the district was concerned about parents who did not get the message and send their children to the bus stop. She said all bus routes were sent out and any student who was located was picked up and brought to the school until a parent could be notified. Cowherd said all students made it back home safely.
Cowherd said the decision to close school for in-person and online learners stemmed from a couple of things. The attack was initially discovered over the weekend when students couldn’t access learning platforms. Access to those platforms was still shut off on Monday.
The other reason was for student safety. The main example Cowherd gave was the district’s data base of information for student contact in case of an emergency. The district did not have access to that information.
“If we have something happen with a student we need to be able to access that and get that information,” Cowherd said.
Cowherd said the attack happened in the 4 a.m. hour on Sunday morning. She said by 9 a.m. of that day the district’s technology department began working on the issue. She said at 4:30 a.m. on Monday morning district leadership met to discuss how to proceed and thought they would be able to have school that day. Nearly two hours later Cowherd was making the call to cancel school.
“We were very excited,” Cowherd said. “Today was our first day back to school for our students in grades six through 12; it was our first day of school basically starting all over. I think I can speak for everyone, I think I can speak for (the technology department), that’s why we worked so hard to get school open today is because it was so important.”
Cowherd said Park Hill is not the first school district to experience an attack of this kind and that she’s heard encouraging things from her colleges; but this was a gut punch.
“As I reflect back with COVID-19 or just pick everything this year, it’s kind of like, ‘Really?” Cowherd said.
District officials could not give many details about what happened because of the investigation but feel confident no personal information was compromised. Director of Technology for Park Hill, Derrick Unruh, said his team is studying what happened.
“We’re constantly focused on continuing to improve our processes,” Unruh said. “We’re working really hard right now to find the root cause of this situation so we can learn and make sure that before we implement the full fix for this situation that we’ve got all of the safety and security measures in place so that we’re not making the situation worse.”
Unruh was asked if there’s anything the district could have done differently in retrospect. He said each yearthe district trains it’s staff and talks to students about what they can do to prevent these types of attacks.
Cowherd said the district has brought in outside investigators including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to find out what happened. She said the priority is to get back to learning but at the same time find out what happened.
“Our goal is to get us back in school as quickly as we can but do it in a safe manner but also make sure this investigation has a chance to actually run it’s course so that we can actually get the answers everybody wants,” Cowherd said. “We want those and we want to share those with you.”
What is malware?
It’s a contraction for “malicious software” that is meant to damage or corrupt a computer’s system. Malware can come in several different types of scams and can include a demand for payment to restore the systems. District officials would not comment on the type of attack or what systems were specifically attacked.