Onslow County Schools in North Carolina said a districtwide phone and internet outage reported Tuesday evening remained unresolved Wednesday, disrupting End-of-Course retesting and graduation livestreams with no estimate for full restoration.
The outage is affecting public communications and school operations during graduation week, when families were relying on livestreams and students were scheduled for testing. The district serves Onslow County on North Carolina’s southeastern coast, including the Jacksonville and Camp Lejeune area, and is the state’s 11th-largest school system, with more than 28,000 students across 43 educational facilities.
Onslow County Schools said a “technical issue” had made phones and internet unavailable at all district locations. The district said there was no estimated timeframe for full restoration, according to notices posted on district webpages.
The outage has affected several operations, including End-of-Course retesting and livestreaming of graduation ceremonies scheduled this week, WCTI reported. The district told families that schools were exploring alternatives and that recordings would be posted to the district’s YouTube channel if livestreams were unavailable.
On Wednesday, the district’s website said the Onslow Virtual School Class of 2026 graduation held Tuesday was not livestreamed because of a technical issue, with a recording to be posted later.
A district Facebook post reviewed by DysruptionHub said some graduations would not be livestreamed and directed families to check back for video uploads. A public commenter suggested the issue had persisted for two days, but the district has not publicly confirmed when the outage began.
Onslow County Schools has not publicly confirmed a cybersecurity incident. Its public wording describes the disruption as a technical issue, and officials have not said whether the outage involves ransomware, malware, unauthorized access, data theft or an outside vendor.
The outage’s scope, lack of a restoration estimate and simultaneous impact on phones, internet, testing and livestreaming are indicators that the district may be responding to more than a routine single-system failure. But those indicators do not establish a cyberattack. Officials have not said whether cybersecurity has been ruled out, which systems are affected beyond phones and internet, or whether any student or employee data was exposed.
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DysruptionHub asked OCS about the outage’s cause, timeline, affected systems, recovery status and whether cybersecurity was involved. The district did not respond by publication. DysruptionHub found no public ransomware claim tied to OCS before publication.
Similar school outages have sometimes drawn cyber scrutiny only later, or without full public confirmation from districts. Eanes schools in Texas lost Wi-Fi for nearly a week in December before a student publication reported administrators had described the cause only as a “cybersecurity situation”; a later Qilin ransomware claim remained unconfirmed by the district. Clarksville schools, also in Texas, told staff and students not to use district computers, laptops or other network-connected devices during a November outage before a later, unverified Interlock claim.
As of publication, Onslow County Schools continued to describe the disruption as a technical issue with no estimated full restoration time, and the district had not confirmed whether cybersecurity was involved.
