City of Hartford postpones first day of school after ransomware attack

Officials from the city of Hartford, Connecticut, were forced to postpone the first day of the new school calendar year after a ransomware infection impacted the city’s IT network.

According to a statement published by Hartford Public Schools, the school district serving the city of Hartford, the ransomware attack impacted several of the school’s internal IT systems, causing a prolonged outage.

IT staff have been working to restore services, but these were not completed in time for the first day of the new school year, scheduled for today, Sept. 8.

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, in-person schooling has been suspended since the spring. In the city of Hartford, today marked not only the first day of the new 2020 school year but also the first day of in-person attendance in months.

According to the district’s school re-opening plan, today, PreK-Grade 2, Grade 6, and Grade 9 students were supposed to have the first school classes in months.

But in a sudden and unexpected announcement earlier this morning, officials said they were forced to delay in-person attendance because the district’s IT system that communicates with the bus company that transports students to school was still down following the ransomware attack.

Since school bus routes couldn’t be configured and monitored, school officials decided to delay the first day of school to a later date.

Remote learning classes have also been suspended, Hartford Public Schools said in a message sent to parents, effectively suspending the start of the entire 2020 school year.

The district didn’t provide a timeline for the remediation of its IT systems and said it would notify parents when they’ll be able to start the new year.