More digital difficulties hit Clark County School District
The Clark County School District experienced an internet outage Friday just days after officials announced a cybersecurity issue and measures in response that have left some students unable to access class materials.
The outage affected district operations, including “internet, email and intermittent phone service,” the district said in a message to parents. “Classes will continue as scheduled, however, some transportation services may be delayed.”
CCSD is currently experiencing an interruption of its internet services, affecting District operations, including internet, email and intermittent phone service.
Classes will continue as scheduled, however, some transportation services may be delayed.— CCSD (@ClarkCountySch) October 20, 2023
The district said it was working with Cox Communications on restoring service. The district’s website also wasn’t operational Friday.
Cox Communications said in a statement Friday morning: “We have identified construction-related damage to our fiber conduit in Las Vegas. All resources are dedicated to restoring services as soon as possible to those impacted; however, repairs may be ongoing throughout the day.”
Information about the number of customers affected wasn’t available.
School officials did not respond to Las Vegas Review-Journal questions. But the district said in a noon update posted on social media sites that “construction related damage” caused the outage affecting the district and other businesses.
Phone service affected in some locations
The internet service provider was working to correct the issue and schools continued with instruction as scheduled, the district wrote.
“The internet outage is impacting phone service at some locations,” according to the message. “Parents/guardians are asked to be patient with school staff through this process.”
Malia Poblete, a senior at Durango High School, said Friday morning that teachers at her school were adapting however they could during the outage.
Poblete, 17, who is student body president, said just after 8 a.m. that she’d only had one class so far that day — video production.
She said her class couldn’t produce the school’s daily television show and “we kind of just sat there.”
Poblete said students need access to Google Drive to work on their script.
“Obviously, the internet outage didn’t help,” she said, because their equipment also didn’t work.
Robert Cowles, a history teacher at Cimarron Memorial High School, said in a Friday message to the Review-Journal that the outage was “really just an annoyance” for him.
He said he could not access work emails, enter attendance or grade anything at work.
Cowles said the disruption pushed back his plan for his guidance classes Friday to apply for the Nevada Promise Scholarship, but his history classes were unaffected.
The outage follows a Monday night announcement that the district was affected by a “cybersecurity incident impacting its email environment” that happened around Oct. 5.
In response, the district is temporarily limiting access to Google Workspace to within school and administrative buildings. Officials also implemented a forced password change for students.
Ryan Fromoltz, a media and English teacher at Harney Middle School, said he did everything on paper with his classes Friday and went through cabinets to scrounge up anything he could use to teach his students.
“I made things work, but there was no technology whatsoever,” he said.
Fromoltz also took attendance for his classes by paper.
He said he didn’t see any communication about the internet outage except for the district’s post on social media since he couldn’t access his work emails.
Fromoltz said that he’s hoping classes will operate like normal on Monday, but that he’s beginning to doubt that will happen.
Christian Rebolledo, 16, a junior at Sierra Vista High School, said Friday that many students at his school “pretty much did nothing all of today.”
But Rebolledo — who is the student body first vice president — said his calculus class regularly has paper assignments and proceeded as normal, although it was a challenge for his teacher to get into the lesson plans.
Rebolledo said mulitiple tests were supposed to be taken on Friday at school, but those were postponed.
A lot of students were upset that they haven’t been able to study before tests, he said, and were stressed and panicked as a result.
Teachers were “very understanding,” he said.
Instead of having a test in his government class Friday, there was a peer discussion assignment instead.
Rebolledo said he hasn’t been able to access any school Google apps for the past two days.
Problems logging in
Problems continued into Friday for some families with accessing their child’s school email accounts and online programs.
Parent Jessica Pitts said Thursday that her second grader, who attends Nevada Learning Academy, the district’s online school, hasn’t been able to reset her password and can’t use her school-issued laptop computer.
“We also have no access to Clever which provides the assignments and lessons they ought to do,” she wrote in an email to the Review-Journal. “We have no access to anything at all!”
Pitts also said there has been no live class instruction.
Pitts wrote that the outage was an inconvenience, but her child was enjoying the time off. She also said that art and physical education teachers sent some fun activities.
“The teachers and staff have been extremely communicative about the whole thing which we are so happy about!” she wrote.
Jana Alnajjar, 17, a senior at College of Southern Nevada High School’s west campus, said the technology issues have been particularly challenging at her school because students are in a dual credit program and take classes at a community college campus.
Students don’t have access to a school district internet network except for in teachers’ offices in a portable building on campus, said Alnajjar, who is student body president. “That makes it a lot harder for us.”
Alnajjar said she hasn’t been able to sign into her district email since Monday — noting many students save their work on their student drive — and it has been “close to impossible” to get work done.
Poblete said she hasn’t been able to log into her email for two days. She puts in her login information, but the platform times out — something that has happened to a couple of her friends as well.
Poblete said some students were able to log on, but not others.
And some students have gotten their password reset, she said, but Google platforms were not loading properly.
“The majority of our materials are online, so teachers have pushed back our due dates and stuff like that for the last week,” Poblete said.
She added: “Homework has kind of been on the back burner for everybody right now.”
Some teachers use hard copy assignments and aren’t too affected, she said, noting that others said they would print out materials if issues were not fixed in the next couple of days.
When students can’t turn in assignments using Canvas — the district’s online learning system — teachers can’t grade them there and then put grades into Infinite Campus, Poblete said, and that has a “domino effect.”
Contact Julie Wootton-Greener at jgreener@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2921. Follow @julieswootton on X. Review-Journal digital content producer Tony Garcia contributed to this report.
