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Computer Systems At Wichita Public Schools Still Down

Larry Darling, flickr Creative Commons

Update: 

Wichita Public Schools has released the following statement:

Good afternoon parents,

I am pleased to tell you that we are beginning the process to bring our critical business systems back online, including our student information system (Synergy) that powers ParentVUE.

We hope to restore full access by the end of the week, though it will take our teachers several weeks to get caught up with online grades due to the time our system has been unavailable.

As you know, we disabled access last week when we discovered an attempted computer system hacking of the district's network. Our investigation is nearing its conclusion, and it is with safety of student and staff data in mind that we begin the restart process.

Please review the following:

 Access to ParentVUE and StudentVUE

 - We hope to restore full access to ParentVUE by the end of this week. Once this is done we will send notice to you through email, social media, and our automated calling system. Your ParentVUEuser name and password will not change. Please keep in mind that due to the time our system has been unavailable, it will take teachers several weeks to get caught up with online grades.

Data Remains Safe

- Our investigation is nearing its conclusion. Based on the investigation done by our cyber-security experts, there is no evidence at this time that any student records have been removed from our systems.

Our entire district community has been inconvenienced because of this situation, and I want to say THANK YOU for your continued patience and support of our district as we worked through the investigation. We look forward to being back up and running at full speed very soon.

Respectfully,

John Allison

Superintendent

Original Story:

The Wichita Public School District is making progress at getting its computer systems back online.

The systems were disabled more than a week ago after an employee discovered a hacking attempt into one of the district’s systems.

Wichita Public Schools says the initial investigation shows the hacking attempt was limited, and there is no evidence at this time that it involved student records.

Payroll processing went off without delay on Friday, and the district provided transcripts for high school seniors in order to meet college and scholarship application deadlines.

District spokeswoman Susan Arensman says they are waiting for the hacking investigation to be complete before bringing the computer systems back online.

"The plans have not been made on which systems will be brought up first, but we are making some preliminary steps on what to do," she says. "We’ll obviously look at what critical business functions need to get done first."

While the systems are down, teachers are taking attendance and recording grades using an alternative method.

Arensman says the district’s investigation is ongoing and includes outside cyber-security experts.

The disabled programs include the portals where students and parents can access grades and class information. Arensman says the district has about 7,000 employees and more than 51,000 students.

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Follow Deborah Shaar on Twitter @deborahshaar.

To contact KMUW News or to send in a news tip, reach us at news@kmuw.org.

Deborah joined the news team at KMUW in September 2014 as a news reporter. She spent more than a dozen years working in news at both public and commercial radio and television stations in Ohio, West Virginia and Detroit, Michigan. Before relocating to Wichita in 2013, Deborah taught news and broadcasting classes at Tarrant County College in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas area.