Aztec Schools in New Mexico Close Amid Mysterious Network Disruption
Update (February 27, 2025): The Aztec Municipal School District has announced plans to reopen schools on March 3, 2025, pending any further network issues. While officials have not provided a definitive cause for the outage, they recently stated, "At this time, we do not have evidence that sensitive data has been impacted, but if the ongoing investigation reveals information to the contrary, we will provide notice to affected individuals in compliance with state and federal laws." This language, commonly used in cybersecurity incidents, suggests that the district is still assessing whether data was compromised.
Virtual learning remains unavailable, and students have been completing instructional packets to meet state-mandated requirements. The district will confirm by Sunday, March 2, at 6 p.m. whether schools will reopen as planned. The prolonged nature of the outage and the district’s cautious wording continue to raise concerns that this may be a cybersecurity-related event rather than a routine technical failure.
On February 23, 2025, at 8:35 p.m., the Aztec Municipal School District in Aztec, New Mexico, announced a network outage that significantly disrupted its operations. As a result, all schools were closed on February 24, 2025, to assess the situation and develop a plan moving forward. The district has not provided a reopening timeline but is actively working to resolve the issue and will share updates as more information becomes available. While officials have not disclosed the cause of the outage, similar incidents in New Mexico have been linked to ransomware attacks. In January 2022, Albuquerque Public Schools suffered a ransomware attack that forced a two-day closure.
The possibility of a ransomware attack on the Aztec Municipal School District cannot be ruled out, especially given past incidents in the state. In August 2024, the Gadsden Independent School District in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, confirmed a ransomware attack that forced staff to shut down computing devices and disconnect from the network. While officials stated that no student or employee data was compromised, the attack underscored the persistent cybersecurity threats facing school districts. Increasingly, schools describe such incidents as "technical issues" unless forced to acknowledge the nature of the attack. Notably, the Aztec district has not stated that this is not a cybersecurity incident, which raises further questions.