Framingham Schools Has A Plan To Give Wi-Fi Access Back to Students, Staff By Mid-February

Framingham High School midterm exams finished today, and started next week the district will work to bring back a form of wi-fi for students and staff not on district-issued devices.

Framingham Patch was the first media outlet to report about the termination of the public wi-fi access earlier this week.

The District is now stating that it needed to shut down the wi-fi due to “Denial of Service” attacks to their system.

However, that was not the official response given to the Patch on Jan. 20, when asked about the Internet and wi-fi issues. (That response is uploaded as a photo to this report.)

And in an email to staff who have the framingham.k12.ma.us addresses the attack was never mentioned either. A letter to parents and students, dated Jan. 14, never went out until after the Patch report was published and some parents have still yet to receive it.

The good news is that this afternoon, Jan. 22, the district now said it has a plan to fix the wi-fi access for students and staff.

Most of the districts solutions were the same ones parents and students suggested on social media since the Patch report first was published. One was even suggested by a School Committee candidate in his letter to the Patch today - he suggested having access to wi-fi for students and staff in the library or the cafeteria.

Framingham Patch contacted Superintendent of Schools Stacy Scott to talk about the Internet and wi-fi access this morning, but is still waiting at of 7 p.m.

However, a response to the wi-fi problems was published on the district’s website this afternoon.

Below is what was published, as it was never sent to parents or students:

Why was Public WIFI Disabled?

Upon returning from holiday break, Framingham Public Schools experienced a series of Denial of Service attacks. The Office of Technology team worked with the district’s Internet Service Provider (ISP) in attempts to mitigate these attacks. The attacks grew in frequency and scale, causing serious delays and outages to all internet services. Through research and collaboration with our Internet Service Provider, Public WIFI was identified as a potential source of the outages and serious risk, due to the anonymity of users accessing this network. A decision was made by the district to disable PUBLIC WIFI. Since disabling PUBLIC WIFI, the district has not had any outages due to the attacks and internet access for district owned devices has stabilized.

Will PUBLIC WIFI be re-enabled?

Yes. PUBLIC WIFI access will be re-enabled for both staff and students to use their personal devices to access internet resources. The Office of Technology is working with our wireless vendor to provide the ability for students and staff to use network credentials to login to our wireless network. The difference in this method will allow us to isolate, filter and report users based on their identity as well as their roles as staff, students or guests. Personal devices will be isolated to provide internet access only.

How long will Public WIFI be unavailable?

The Office of Technology is working to implement this on-boarding and authentication solution as quickly as possible. Careful steps are being taken to not cause further disruption of services. Our goal is to have PUBLIC WIFI re-enabled by February 12th.

What can be done in the meantime?

Although not as convenient as personal devices, each school has district provided devices and computer labs with full access to the internet. Starting on 1/25/2016, temporary filtered and monitored WIFI access will be provided in the cafe and library at Framingham High School, via a shared key.

Despite no wi-fi access for high school students prepping for midterm exams or during mid term exams, Framingham Patch spoke to students today who told us that some teachers still required students to use their smart phones during midterm exams. The students were to use their own personal hot spots to email the teacher responses, and if they did not have a hot spot they could email responses when they got home.

Other students told Patch that some students did not have smart phones and they were allowed to use a district device or borrow another student’s or the teacher’s smart phone during the midterm.

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Do you think the district handled this issue properly? Post your thoughts in the comments.