Internet and phone outages disrupted Llano Independent School District in Texas Sept. 29. People were told to contact schools in person, and the district acknowledged a cybersecurity incident the next day.
The incident affected the district’s IT network, Assistant Superintendent Ryan Turner said in a Sept. 30 follow-up notice. The district took certain computer systems offline to contain the problem and brought in outside specialists to investigate.
“If you need to contact us, you will need to physically go to the campus office,” Kristi Downey, secretary to the superintendent, wrote in the previous day’s outage notice.
Turner said the district was working to bring systems back online. “We are diligently working to restore normal operations as quickly and safely as possible,” he wrote.
Based in Llano in Central Texas, the district operates four campuses and enrolled about 2,000 students in the 2025-26 school year. The notices did not say whether classes were canceled or instruction was interrupted.
The district did not explain what caused the network disruption or establish when the cybersecurity incident began. Its notices did not specify which systems were taken offline or how the shutdown affected individual campuses.
The ransomware group Qilin listed the district as a victim, according to a ransomware.live entry recorded Oct. 18. The claim remains unverified; the district has not identified an attacker or confirmed ransomware or data theft.
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The district did not respond to DysruptionHub’s request for comment.
School phone disruptions have prompted similar contact workarounds elsewhere. Earlier in September, Alaska’s North Slope Borough School District gave families temporary cellphone numbers after a cyber incident while classes continued in person.
As of Oct. 23, DysruptionHub had not found a later district statement confirming full restoration. The duration of the internet and phone outages remains unclear.
