VUSD Faces Ransomware Attack

By: Abigail Miller, Megan Yang, Katelyn Weddle, Ryan Kaspar, and Tyler Stark

On Monday, May 18th, 2021, when the Powerschool page would not load, teachers, administrators, and students knew something was wrong. Visalia Unified School District’s software used to hold student information fell victim to a ransomware attack.

Powerschool, the website VUSD uses to hold student records, transcripts, and schedules has been inaccessible since.

Adam Hacker, a freshman at Redwood High school, says, “It’s a very scary thought, thinking about how all my grades could be lost.” The majority of the students have worked hard while struggling with being online. Thinking about how, “All of that work gone in an instant is horrifying,” he says. According to Hacker, all students can do is “trust in the school district to do their best” with resolving this issue.

Alexa Barba-Tepper, Redwood Assistant Principal, Student Services, says that so far “I actually put everything on hold that I could do in regards to for instance summer school, were still in the middle of shifting students around. So I just stopped for two days and actually got to work on my graduation boxes, and the counselors got to help me because everything they do involves Powerschool and the summer school portal.”

Barba-Tepper also adds that Redwood has contacted the College of the Sequoias about the issue. Students have been preparing to take summer classes and asking for prerequisites overrides and official transcripts for classes that can not be accessed at this time.

Currently COS is administering temporary overrides right now for those students.

As for summer school, Barba-Tepper says ” the students were there [listed in the portal], and kids have their schedules, so that’s the good news…all that information went out, it’s just a matter of making sure it gets back so teachers can have a roster and know who to expect.”

Teachers and administrators have realized that they have learned a hard lesson which is to always do backups.

Yearbook advisor Mr. Feehan was more directly affected by the hack. While in the middle of senior ads, a few of the files became inaccessible which “set us way back on those.” He adds that “projects and staff portraits, it has all slowed down.” Feehan notes that a large portion of the files can still be accessed, but it has created organizational problems.

Besides the physical effects, Feehan touches on the mental effects of the hack: “This has increased my stress, and I am having to play catch-up.” He ends his thoughts by reflecting on the main online year students have had. With online teaching, Feehan “moved many things to the cloud, meaning that we had a backup rather than everything only being on the server.” This aided the class with only a few things inaccessible, and despite the challenges from the hack, the yearbook is still expected to be distributed on time.

As of this publication, on Friday, May 21, 2021, limited Powerschool access has been restored to teachers, and district IT employees are working to restore full functionality.