School board waits for directions after cyberattack

Algoma District School Board officials are waiting for directions from the Education Quality and Accountability Office after technical problems ruined an October 20 province-wide trial run of the EQAO’s online high school literacy test.

In a news release issued Monday, the EQAO said the cause of the technical problems that led to the cancellation of the new, online version of the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT) was “an intentional, malicious and sustained Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.” 

Each of the estimated 400 ADSB students who wrote the test across the region were affected by the cyberattack, said Joe Maurice, ADSB education superintendent, speaking to SooToday after the board’s regular meeting Tuesday. 

“Even those that finished the test, it took them a while to finish because there were delays and they had to log back in,” Maurice said.

“What we don’t know is, of the kids that finished the test, we have no idea of knowing right now whether their tests were saved to the system by EQAO, and now we’re waiting to hear from EQAO,” said Lucia Reese, ADSB director of education.

It is also not yet known if those students who may have successfully finished and passed the EQAO test will have to re-write it in March as a result of the cyberattack.

“EQAO has been meeting to discuss that…we need to know if those tests will be scored, and whether students will get their results, we need to know if students who weren’t able to finish the test before the cyberattack will be able to write it again in March as a first time test writing,” Reese said.

“We’re waiting on direction and answers from EQAO and my understanding is they should be coming out with those answers imminently.”

In another ADSB matter, Reese said city council’s decision to close the Sault Ste. Marie Public Library’s Korah branch, in addition to its decision to close the Churchill Plaza branch, has not taken the board by surprise in its plan to refurbish the former Alexander Henry high school site into a combination of a French Immersion school and a North end public library site.

Council’s decision to close the Korah branch does not alter any finalized blueprints the ADSB may have had for the old Henry site.       

“Right from the beginning of this project we’ve kept the two seperate from one another (school and library), so right now we’re planning for the school knowing that planning for a library space could be a possibility down the road,” Reese said.

“Certainly we’ll want to start having conversations with the Library board around what this will look like in future, and then we would start to put some plans in place.”

In other ADSB matters from Tuesday’s board meeting;

• The process of accommodation review (a series of steps which school boards must take prior to deciding on probable closure of a school due to declining enrolment and/or aging infrastructure) continues for Blind River Public School, Sir James Dunn Public School in Wawa and Arthur Henderson Public School in Bruce Mines 
• Joe Santa Maria, ADSB superintendent of business, informed the board the ADSB will be receiving a $74,000 refund from the Ontario School Boards’ Insurance Exchange.  “It’s a great news story, so we can use those funds for the good things we do,” Santa Maria said.