Philadelphia Charter School network disrupted by cyber incident

(TNS) — Mastery Schools, Philadelphia's largest charter school network, experienced a “system disruption” in its IT infrastructure Monday that caused phones to go offline and email access to be limited, officials said.

While the broadcaster initially described the incident as a minor hiccup that did not impact classes, a teacher disputed that account, saying the outage had disrupted plans in numerous classrooms where instruction relies on internet connections and Chromebooks.

In a statement late Monday, Peter Lee, Mastery's chief information officer, declined to comment on the cause of the outage.

On Tuesday, Mastery CEO Joel D. Boyd said the Charter Network had shut down its systems because it had “noticed suspicious activity attributed to an unauthorized external source.”

Mastery has hired “experienced cybersecurity experts” and contacted federal police, Boyd said. He said there was no evidence of identity theft or fraud.

The charter network, which operates schools in Philadelphia and Camden, had not given a reason for the outage on Monday but said it was “working with experts to resolve the issue and bring schools back online as quickly and safely as possible.” Families could reach the schools through direct cellphone numbers, officials said.

A teacher at Mastery Hardy Williams in Southwest Philadelphia, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal from school administrators, said teachers at the school were informed by their principal Monday morning before they arrived at school that the Internet was down.

An hour later, they were told to prepare for possible outages lasting several days, the teacher said.

“It's a little ironic,” the teacher said, because Mastery only switched to a one-on-one system this year, where all students work on Chromebooks and all graded assignments must be submitted electronically.

While some teachers had not prepared their lessons on paper – “we get in trouble if things aren't on the computer,” the teacher said – some had a written Plan B. Others improvised.

“Everyone was really creative, it was incredible to see,” said the teacher. But “you could feel the stress” given the prospect that the disruptions would continue for days.

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