Challenges for teachers after cyber outage at Rainbow Schools

The elementary teachers' union says educators are facing several challenges since the Rainbow District School Board's cyber incident.

The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario says the cyber incident impacting Rainbow District School Board schools has created challenges for some teachers.

There have been issues since Friday, including no internet access, although some systems have now been restored.

The president of the local, Liana Holm, said elementary teachers had to pivot away from online platforms back to paper and pencil.

Back to paper and pencils

“A lot of our resources now have switched to an online platform. We have teachers who have gone to school online who have never even taught in a classroom in a classroom where a lot of paper and pencil resources were available,” Holm said.

“Now they are having to pivot and search for things they have never used before.”

She said about a fourth of its membership has done everything online since they started teaching.

The union represents 750 full-time teachers in the 38 schools.

The union said some teachers have chosen to use their personal devices to deliver programming to ensure learning is not interrupted.

Teachers are not compensated for data on their personal devices.

In a news release, the Rainbow District School Board said as of today staff can access the Internet but Wi-Fi access to students remains off.