(WKBN) — There was no school Thursday for some Trumbull County districts, but it wasn’t just to give students and staff an extra day of spring break.
Issues with internet and phone connectivity with schools started Wednesday afternoon. No internet meant teachers had to scramble lessons, and another challenge was in the hallway.
“We have an electronic pass system, so a lot of our students who needed to leave the room for passes. We had to monitor the hallways to make sure that there weren’t too many kids coming out because we didn’t know how to monitor them,” said Liberty High School principal Brian Knight.
The problem was with the Northeast Ohio Management Information Network, or NEOMIN. It provides services to schools in Trumbull and Ashtabula Counties, such as internet connectivity and more.
NEOMIN services include:
- Internet Connectivity
- Fiscal Systems
- Digital Learning Content
- Library Services
- Student Information Systems
Liberty was one of nine school districts which recognized that having school Thursday would’ve been difficult. Other schools included Howland, Hubbard, McDonald, Southington, Warren city and more.
“The challenge would have been over a six-hour period, especially if you had everything planned up to spring break, and then all of a sudden you’re having to revamp everything,” Knight said.
NEOMIN says the outage was caused by an equipment failure that provides connectivity to school district networks as well as internet access. It released the following statement:
This outage was caused by an equipment failure in the datacenter that provides connectivity to school district networks as well as internet access.
Brian Greathouse, NEOMIN Executive Director
The schools had trouble even putting together an all-call without the ability to send it out, which is why the school closings popped up on-air Wednesday night.
School district superintendents and other officials decided holding classes on Thursday would not have been very productive.
“Students just they rely on technology. They rely on their phones, they rely on their computers to receive this information, and they wouldn’t have had access to it,” Knight said.
As a principal, Knight still went to his school building this morning in case any kids showed up.
NOEMIN’s website was still down, and its phone was not able to handle calls, until after 6 p.m. Thursday. A spokesperson with the network confirmed its services have been restored.
Lindsey Watson, C. Aileen Blaine and Brandon Jaces contributed to this report.
