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May 22, 2024
GLPS Families,
I wanted to take a moment and follow up with you after this morning’s events. I know how difficult it is to make arrangements in the moment, and I am so sorry you were put in that situation this morning. I wanted to provide you with a little more detail, as well as some next steps the district needs to take. Here is a quick timeline of events this morning:
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- 6:15 am - We had a reported outage at our operations building.
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- 6:35 am - Our tech team confirmed the outage there and in all buildings across the district.
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- 7:15 am - Our tech team determined the source of the outage and ruled out any quick fixes.
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- 7:45 am - After making logistical plans with school leaders and alerting staff, we sent the message to families.
We have secondary students on the bus at 6:30, and Hayes opens the doors to start in the morning at 7:20; elementary bus runs begin at 7:50. Our sincere hope was that there was a quick fix so we wouldn’t have to adjust schedules, especially since kids were already on their way to school. However, with so many of our operations – including the ability to call in and out of our school buildings, printing from our Google workspaces, and accessing some of our student information systems – dependent on the internet, and a confirmation that it was going to take some time to repair, we made the call we did in the interest of student safety and learning.
As some of you may recall, this happened on the second day of school in the fall of 2022. After that, the district purchased a back-up system to prevent an internet outage from interrupting our day. However, as luck would have it, the back-up system was offline today to repair a break in the fiber that feeds it to our district.
Our central office team met this morning to debrief, and to begin planning for contingencies we can put in place to further insulate the district from one or both systems going down again. We also were able to troubleshoot accessing HVAC systems, even if the internet is down. We will begin working on those plans now, to ensure they are in place for the fall.
The good news is that as I type this, the internet service seems to be returning to the school district, so we do not anticipate further disruptions. It also means that we are planning on holding all evening activities as normal today. This includes, but is not limited to, the Hayes band concert, Welcome to Kindergarten meetings in the elementary schools and at Sawdon, and all athletic events. We have contingency plans in place for each of these situations in case the internet goes back out again as well.
Again, thank you for your patience, understanding, and partnership. We greatly appreciate it. As always, I am #proudtobeacomet.
Dr. Bill Barnes
Superintendent of Schools
