When floodwater raced through North Texas Monday, a different type of disaster was unfolding in Mansfield ISD when nothing appeared to work. Everything from student schedules and grades to the phone and email system stopped working.
The district's internet-based systems were hacked. The unidentified perpetrators are demanding money to undo it. The district won't say how much but other school districts have previously paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in similar instances.
"All our instruction that was preloaded and ready to go we had to pivot and make adjustments to what we're teaching and how we're going to get that across," said Shaye Anne Atwood, Principal, Jerry Knight Stem Academy
CYBER ATTACKS
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"Every single assignment, your agenda, everything is on canvas," said Denice Cepe, an 8th grader at the STEM school that was hurt by the outage more than anyone, considering the campus' reliance on technology.
For Cepe, she didn't remember a time when there were no smart boards or iPads in school.
Meanwhile, Teachers are doing what teachers do: adapting.
They're also exposing students to something new: paper.
It wasn't easy. The school's copier is connected to the internet, so that too is down. So, the teachers drove to staples, determined to keep teaching.
"I realized I couldn't go to my usual online sources, but I could do this," said Blake Lindsey, Mansfield ISD teacher.
CARTER IN THE CLASSROOM
Lindsey had students work on a huge puzzle of the US, and answer questions about geography as he starts his US Geography course.
"I could get this in their hands, they're moving, they're talking about the geography of it," he said.
It's unclear how long Mansfield will be offline and whether this adaptive of way teaching will help students and teachers.
