Schools in Academy District 20 will operate on a two-hour delay Thursday for students because of a planned internet and phone outage, according to the district.

Staff will report at normal times to help prepare for the non-standard day, the district said Wednesday on its website.

The district memo said:

Upon arriving to your respective buildings, school operations will operate with limited access to internet systems. Essentially, this will be a paper and pencil student contact day, unless internet operations are restored. Please see specific instructions and operation protocols for tomorrow.

As we seek to restore our internet connections, we want to share our recovery process with you. This intentional internet outage was initiated as part of a cybersecurity response protocol. District staff are working through the evening to remedy the issue.

The District provided an update to the recovery process Thursday afternoon, saying the intentional outage is part of a “precautionary cybersecurity response” with their vendor Palo Alto for “a firewall vulnerability” that impacted all their customers across the country.

Network access in the district remains unavailable as work continues to rebuild its firewalls, with school planned at its normal time Friday but with limited access to available internet systems.

E-learning services for students at home will be unavailable since it requires the entire network to be active.

Schools and school buses will have a temporary phone service in place tomorrow for any emergencies and SAT and PSAT testing will continue as planned at district high schools utilizing available hot spots, with any makeup dates to be determined at a later date.

Bus arrival and dismissal will operate as scheduled and schools will offer breakfast and lunch, but the point-of-sale system will be down so students cannot purchase individual items.

“As we continue working to restore our network access, we want to thank members of our team for their effort and dedication to our schools and for providing support for students,” the district said in a statement Thursday afternoon. “Our teams will continue to work around the clock as we move towards a return to normal for our network.”

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