On Tuesday Feb. 14th, Bonita Vista High (BVH) students started the school day without the internet. BVH students and staff would have to go without the internet for that entire week. Numerous staff members are unsure whether to confirm there was a security breach that led to the entire Sweetwater Union High School District’s (SUHSD) internet to be cut.

School site technician David Elsheikh confirmed that there was “some sort of security breach” that occurred in the last week. SUHSD took immediate steps to turn off the internet, students’ Google accounts and staff Outlook accounts. 

“[SUHSD] settled on taking everything down and starting from scratch, looking through everything and then bringing systems up one by one, once we’re sure they were safe. Outlook, the email list and exchange for still is still the one thing that’s definitely down,” Elsheikh said.

Elsheikh was unable to perform his normal duties that Tuesday because of the internet shut down. For example, he was not able to get new laptops for students nor communicate with the BVH community on the situation. However, he was able to set up a temporary network for students and staff to use last week.

“This week, I was doing handouts for the password resets for students and staff, as well as how to get on WiFi and then how to move on to a different WiFi network once you’ve done your password reset,” Elsheikh said.

Elsheikh “was unable to do a lot” due to the internet connection and networks being centrally managed. Central management refers to the main IT office for the districts’ tech specialists and managers. However, Elsheikh acknowledges he was able to pass hotspots to teachers and communicate through Microsoft Teams.

“As information comes to me, I distribute that. But I test things before I tell all the staff,” Elsheikh said. “In some cases, [staff members] figured out something was on before I did because they were constantly trying something. Right now, some staff members are reporting that their email is working, but I don’t think that’s the case. I haven’t heard anything officially.”

Despite BVH attempting to continue education without a network, Elsheikh notes the success in students resetting and changing their passwords. According to Elsheikh, the deadline to reset passwords was initially in Nov. 2022, then pushed to Jan. to Feb. 21.

“There’s one positive thing I can say. The effort from BVH staff and students were doing a very very good job of changing their passwords and getting it done. The library staff got everybody to do that. BVH was well ahead of the average of other school sites of similar size,” Elsheikh said.