Camp Verde Unified School District had its first day on Monday, Aug. 5. In addition to the usual stress and confusion that can come with new students and a new school year, the district was plagued with a much more serious difficulty — their computer systems had been hacked.
On Friday, July 19, district employees booted up computers to find that the whole district’s computer system had been hit by a ransom- ware attack, making it impossible to access any of their systems. The hackers demanded digital money in order to reclaim access to their files and computers.
CVUSD is one of numerous schools around the country that have faced these kinds of attacks. On July 26, Louisiana’s governor declared a state of emergency after three school districts were hacked. A 2017 report from the Internal Revenue Service issued an urgent alert.
Luckily, the district already had cybersecurity insurance, allowing them to get to work on recovering their systems and trying to fix the problem. Camp Verde Middle School principal and district administrator-in-charge Danny Howe said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the efforts to retrieve the data and get out of this mostly unscathed after more than two weeks. But with school starting in the middle of the crisis, the district has not had an easy time.
“Given the set of circumstances that happened, last week went very well,” Howe said of the first week at CVUSD. “It’s not technology that makes our district. It’s the teachers and the students that go here.”
Howe informed teachers and staff of the problem at a back-to-school event on the morning of July 31, and rejected calls to postpone the first day of school.
According to Howe, the main effect that the unusable computer system has had on the school has been in the business office. The staff worked to allow computers needed for instruction in computer lab classes in the high school to be operational as soon as possible. But many of the administrative tasks, such as payroll, and enrollment of students who were not initially on the roster, are being hit hard.
“For every day that our computers aren’t up in the business office, we’re just getting further and further behind in terms of paying bills,” Howe said. “We’re doing checks and stuff by hand. People still have to get paid”
Nevertheless, Howe and the other principals say that they are looking forward to the school year despite the issues.
Breanna Hicks, left, takes photos of her children Nolan, Rylan and Raelynn outside of Camp Verde Elementary School on the first day of school on Monday, Aug. 5, in Camp Verde. Daulton Venglar/Larson Newspapers
“Despite the setback, teachers were upbeat, positive, excited and ready to welcome students back to school,” Camp Verde Elementary School Principal Jaclyn Campbell wrote in an email. “Technology is a great ‘tool’ we use, but teachers, staff and students are what make a school great, and we had all of those present on the first day of school. Everybody pitched in to make it a successful day. Without network access on the first day, several tasks such as lunch count, attendance and bus assignments were taken on paper rosters rather than online.”
This is Campbell’s first year as CVES principal, and she expressed joy at being with the school district, even in this difficult time.
“I have been blown away by the warm welcome from teachers, staff members, students, parents, district office staff, board members and community partners,” Campbell wrote. “Everyone has been incredibly kind and welcoming. When students arrived on the first day, I was so impressed with their manners and good behavior throughout the day. ‘Capturing Kids’ Hearts’ has been an initiative at the school for several years, and students are quite familiar with the process. Positive relationships are a priority at our school and you can feel that when you walk on our campus. It’s a great place to be.”
Howe hopes that the systems will be fixed soon, but is not worried about the school district’s ability to teach kids even if they remain broken for a long time.
“When I started school here in 1991, there weren’t any computers,” Howe said. “We did everything by hand in the books. We kept attendance in the books handwritten. We kept grades handwritten. So I told everybody when they wanted me to postpone school, ‘If we can’t do it without a computer, we’ve got problems.’”
