But for now, the return will look like a relic of the past. While the district continues investigating the "unauthorized activity" detected on its systems over the weekend, there will be no Internet access at any of the 18,000-student district's campuses.
Teachers will take attendance with pen and paper, and bus routes will be printed out. Internet-based tools like Google Classroom, the norm of modern schooling, will be replaced with printouts of various curricula, said district spokesperson Tove Tupper.
"It's a big lift" for school staff members because they will have no access to district devices for an undetermined amount of time, said Jeb Binns, president of the Highline Education Association, the district's teachers union.
District officials shut down Wi-Fi over the weekend after detecting "unauthorized activity" on their systems. So far, the district has provided few details on the cyber attack, including whether it has been able to boot the threat from its systems.
The closures made for a strange start to the school year. Classes began last week for everyone except preschoolers and kindergartners. When the alerts about canceled school came Sunday evening, student Richard Ramirez said he had a flashback to the pandemic-era shutdowns.
"I was in shock at how serious it seemed to be," said Ramirez, a senior at Evergreen High School.
Ramirez has spent most of the time at home, he said, watching after his younger siblings and chipping away at homework from last week.
Cyber attacks are rising as more school systems rely on the Internet and technology to conduct business. In 2021, cybersecurity firm Emsisoft reported 62 attacks. By 2023, the number was more than 100. In some cases, hackers demand a ransom or threaten to post personal information online.
According to district officials, it does not appear that hackers accessed staff or students' personal information during this incident.
Several other Washington school districts have fallen prey to technology breaches. In recent years, the state's Attorney General's Office has logged potential information breaches in the Olympia, Renton, Bethel and Bellevue school districts. In 2023, Shoreline College was also the victim of a cybersecurity incident.
Binns called for more funding from the state and federal governments to help school districts deal with cyber attacks.
The district's technology team has been working early mornings and late nights to determine the effects of the intrusion, Tupper said. It is also working with third-party cybersecurity experts. It doesn't appear the cyber attack made any personal data vulnerable.
Preschool, which usually starts later than K-12, will begin next week instead. Programming for the district's online learning academies, Highline Virtual Academy and Highline Virtual Elementary, is also to be determined.
Tupper stressed that the threat is only to the district's digital systems, not the physical safety of buildings.
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