Students to return to classes while Park Hill continues to investigate cyberattack
Students will return to learning on Wednesday for the first time after a cyberattack forced the Park Hill School District in Kansas City’s Northland to cancel classes earlier this week, the district said.
“We now have access to the key systems we need to make sure our schools are safe and that we can continue with teaching and learning,” the district said in a message sent to families and staff. “As a result, we look forward to having school tomorrow (Wednesday), both for our in-person and our online students.”
The malware, which occurred early Sunday and affected many of the applications that the district uses for learning and running its schools, forced the district to cancel classes Monday and Tuesday. The cancellation of classes came at a time students in grades 6-12 were returning to classrooms.
Students and staff can now access all the programs in the application portal, including Schoology and Infinite Campus. Parents can also access the parent portal, the district said.
“We could still have a few intermittent issues, but everything should be up and running,” said the district, which is in southern Platte County and has an enrollment of just under 12,000 students and 1,800 teachers and staff.
The investigation into the attack is ongoing. The district said that it’s been meeting with security experts, including some from the Secret Service and the FBI.
The district on Monday was still trying to determine which systems had been targeted by the cyberattack, but was hopeful that safety precautions and systems prevented access to student’s and staff’s personal information.
“We are still waiting to share specific details while we are still in the middle of this investigation, but we can tell you that the evidence makes us hopeful that there was no personally identifiable information compromised or accessed by unauthorized people,” the district said in its message to families and staff.
The FBI in Kansas City said Monday that it was aware of the incident and had been in contact with the district. It referred any additional questions to the school district.
The PTA’s planned School Board Candidate Forum for 6 p.m. Tuesday will go on as planned and can be access online at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg4195slhlJKYS4S_gpGVLg/live.
