Thank You for Your Patience and Perseverance Through the Internet Outage

Over the past several days, our district has faced an unprecedented fiber optic internet outage affecting every school and department. I want to take a moment to recognize the resilience and professionalism of our teachers, staff, school leaders, students, and families as we work through this challenge together.

First and foremost, I want to express my sincere gratitude to our entire school community. Your patience, flexibility, and commitment to students have made a meaningful difference during a very difficult situation.

I especially want to highlight our outstanding TRC technology team. Our technology specialists, technicians, managers, and leaders have been working literally around the clock both onsite and remotely to mitigate the disruption and restore essential services. They deployed portable Wi Fi hotspots strategically throughout the district to bring critical systems back online, including communication platforms, our finance department so payroll could be processed, and other systems essential to the health and safety of our students and staff.

This type of response is not new for our district. We use similar strategies during school and multi school outages, hurricanes, and other natural disasters or interruptions. What makes this situation different is the scale. A districtwide outage requires coordination, prioritization, and problem solving at a much greater level.

In today’s educational environment, reliable internet access is essential. Rigorous and relevant instruction, differentiated to meet individual student needs, relies heavily on secure digital systems. Being without internet access can feel nearly as disruptive as losing electricity. However, unlike electrical grids, which can seamlessly draw power from multiple plants if one goes down, school networks cannot simply redirect connectivity of that magnitude from another source. We operate under strict federal FERPA requirements and Florida’s rigorous student privacy laws. These protections are essential, but they also require safeguards that are not easily transferable when a network goes down, even in cloud-based environments.

Many have asked what we will do in the future when situations like this occur. Please know that every disruption becomes an opportunity to improve. While triaging mission critical systems, our staff and leaders are reviewing timelines, redundancies, communication strategies, and infrastructure needs so we are better prepared next time. That work is already underway.

Despite these obstacles, our teachers have continued to ensure continuity of instruction. A single school outage is challenging. A multi school outage is significant. A districtwide outage is entirely different. Yet our educators and staff have adapted with creativity and dedication, always keeping students at the center.

To our families and students, thank you for your patience and understanding. To every employee who has stepped up in visible and behind the scenes ways, thank you for your service to our community. We are deeply grateful, and we will emerge from this stronger together.

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