Good evening Haverhill families and staff,

I am writing to keep you abreast of our progress in dealing with the cyberattack on our school system. Ransomware recovery timeframes can vary widely and bumps are expected along the way.  Our IT team has worked diligently all weekend on recovery efforts, however despite their long hours we hit a snag and are not able to have internet access available in our schools tomorrow as hoped. The lack of internet access will impact synchronous learning across the school district. 

Fully in-person learners and fully remote learners should experience minimal impact. We have installed a limited number of hotspots to allow limited access to vital resources and we have regained remote access to our cloud-based platforms, such as Google and online curriculums. 

As we noted, the limited internet access in the schools makes wide-spread synchronous teaching impossible. As such we have made the difficult decision that Haverhill High School will be fully remote tomorrow Monday, April 12, 2021. All other schools will operate per our full in-person reopening plan:

HPS Monday April 12, 2021 

Students in Grades Pre-K, Kindergarten and Grades 1-4 (except those fully enrolled in the Remote Learning Academy) will continue their in-person learning on Monday, 4/12.

• Students attending our Learning for Life, Greenleaf Academy and T.E.A.C.H. program at Bartlett School (except those fully enrolled in the Remote Learning Academy) will continue their in-person learning on Monday, 4/12.
• Students in Grades 5, 6 (except those fully enrolled in the Remote Learning Academy) will begin their in-person learning on Monday, 4/12.
• Students in Grades 7 & 8 – Cohort A & C In Person, Cohort B remote (Cohort D – RLA will continue remote)
• Haverhill High School – Full Remote All Grades

It is possible that we will have some residual issues with phone systems. If that occurs,  calls will be re-routed through the central office. Should there be issues with remote learning, particularly for Cohort B grades 7 & 8, our curriculum Department has provided standards-aligned, grade level, subject- specific asynchronous lessons for students. 

• Please click here for Grade 7 asynchronous lessons.  
• Please click here for Grade 8  asynchronous lessons.  

As we continue our IT recovery process, we have been advised that a common time frame for a well-managed ransomware recovery effort is one to two weeks. It is important to state that “recovery” is defined here as getting the IT system back online so the school system can operate. After we are back online and operational, there typically are several more weeks of work to be done making sure the IT management and security infrastructure is effectively more robust than before the ransomware attack. Thank you for your patience. While the process is slow,  it must be noted that the rate of progress we are making is impressive. We have an excellent IT Department and we are hopeful that school will operate as scheduled for all grades on Tuesday, April 13, 2021. 

Sincerely,

Margaret Marotta EdD

Superintendent of Schools