Multi-City Internet Outage Impacts Texas School Districts

Students and staff in at least eight local school districts went without Internet access Tuesday due to an ongoing multi-city outage.

Northside, North East, Judson, Alamo Heights, Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City, Southside, East Central and Edgewood independent school districts were among the Texas school systems that lost access.

“We are currently experiencing an Internet outage across our district due to a fiber cut impacting areas in San Antonio, Austin and surrounding regions,” North East ISD wrote on Facebook.

The outage is affecting districts that use Internet service provider Zayo.

“Zayo is aware of the situation impacting school districts” in the region, the Denver-based company said in a statement. “We have crews onsite and are working to restore service as soon as possible.”

North East ISD spokesperson Aubrey Chancellor said crews were working to fix the connectivity issues.

The district lost Internet at around 11:30 a.m. as many students prepared to take their end-of-semester exams before winter break. Chancellor said the outage disrupted testing at some campuses and that exams will be rescheduled when the Internet service returns.

The outage is affecting school districts “from Dallas to San Antonio,” Alamo Heights ISD wrote on social media. Spokesperson Julie Ann Matonis said the district will have school tomorrow even if service isn’t restored.

“Teachers are making plans for semester exams that do not include the Internet if the outage persists,” she said.

San Antonio’s largest district with over 100,000 students, Northside ISD currently has no Internet or phone service. The district is advising families who need to contact a campus to utilize its emergency phone list.

“We are proceeding with school as normal and we will not have closures tomorrow due to any potential outages,” Northside ISD spokesperson Barry Perez said.

Perez said the district contracts for Internet service through Education Service Center 20, a region of 58 school districts including 15 in Bexar County.

“Zayo is an Internet service provider for many districts,” Education Service Center 20 spokesperson Mayra de Hoyos said. “They are experiencing an outage in the Austin and San Antonio areas and are currently working to resolve.”

Phones and Internet are also down at Edgewood ISD. The district warned that it is currently “unable to do calls and text alerts” and, like other districts, said it is working with its provider to resolve the issue quickly.

Judson ISD reported on social media that its districtwide connectivity issues were “intermittent.”

Southwest ISD lost Internet for about 10 minutes. Spokesperson Jenny Collier said the district has two circuits and was able to move everything over to its other provider, AT&T. The only system it couldn’t restore service to was Frontline, a software suite where staff log their shifts and enter student grades.

San Antonio ISD uses a different service provider and was not affected. Spokesperson Laura Short said the district has a “resilient system that diverts Internet traffic to an alternate provider” in the case of an outage so teachers and students don’t lose class time.

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