Dear Parent/Guardian,

We are so excited to have everyone back on campus again! We hope the holidays were good for each of you. I want to share with you some updated information relating to our text messaging system, quarantine protocols, cyber incident and our school calendar.

First, we were told last week that Ohio Alerts will no longer be a provider for us after this school year. This alert system is controlled by the A-site (Northwest Ohio Area Computer Services Cooperative), who we contract with for technology services. Recently, we were told by the NOACSC that they were having issues with AT&T specifically and could not guarantee AT&T users that alerts sent out by our district would be successful in reaching AT&T customers. Since then, it’s become necessary for the NOACSC to disband the contract for this service and have us look elsewhere for a provider. We are currently in the process of seeking out vendors to contract with prior to the 2021-22 school year. We will communicate this change when it occurs.

Second, the governor recently announced new guidelines within the educational setting regarding the quarantining of students. These guidelines now state that students who are following the current protocols of mask wearing, social distancing, etc. will not have to quarantine as in the past. However, quarantining may still occur for students who are in extra-curricular activities or when in situations where our protocols were not followed. Our nurses will still make these decisions on an individual basis depending on the situation and the environment in which an exposure has deemed to have occurred.

Third, we recently received our report from MS-ISAC on the investigation into our cyber-attack. The MS-ISAC (Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center) is an organization that has been designated by the Department of Homeland Security as the key resource for cyber threat prevention, protection, response and recovery for the nation’s state, local, territorial and tribal (SLTT) governments. They have communicated to us that our case is now closed. Unfortunately, they could not determine exactly how the virus got into our system other than to state it most likely occurred with someone opening an infected email attachment. Moreover, MS-ISAC stated, “There was evidence that there was traffic to the outside from the infected servers but no proof that any data was transferred. BUT, that does not mean that there was none.” Since the cyber incident occurred, we have collected all student and staff laptops/computers in the district and re-imaged them. With the help of the NOACSC, we have re-built servers and work stations with restored data that has been scanned by multiple scanners before being placed onto the new servers. As an added layer of protection, we are now requiring dual authentication for staff when using email. Additionally, we have upgraded password requirements as well as making an upgrade to our Antivirus software.

Lastly, we will continue with two-hour delays on Fridays starting with this Friday extending through the third nine weeks which ends on March 18, 2021. Please note we do not have school next Friday January 15th, 2021 due to a teacher professional development day.

Sincerely,

Rich Dackin