A short internet outage on Wednesday morning had a small impact on some remote learning students in Great Falls Public Schools, the district said.
A representative for the internet company Spectrum told MTN News the outage was caused by an issue with a third-party carrier's network. The spokesperson said service was restored at 9 a.m. on Wednesday. In an earlier Twitter post, Spectrum said the issue was affecting customers in Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado.
Superintendent Tom Moore told MTN News early Saturday that the district's remote learning centers were only minimally affected by the outage, and remote learning centers were back to operating as normal. But if something like this were to happen again, for a more extended period of time, Moore said there are plans in place.
"If the power goes out, or if the internet goes out, or if our telephone systems go out, we'll have to pivot and adjust and make do without," he said. "If it's an extended period of time, where we deliver packets to remote learners, we'll have to go back to doing that."
He said the grades of students who couldn't log into class briefly on Wednesday would not be affected by the outage.
Nearly 20% of the district's approximately 10,000 students have opted for remote learning this semester, Moore said at a news conference earlier this fall.
