Phones, email restored to St. Paul Public Schools; internet outages persist

Telephone and e-mail service has been restored to most schools in the St. Paul Public School District, but internet outages persist, the district said.

An undetermined disruption knocked out telephone, internet and e-mail service Monday morning, but the problems were not related to the ransomware cyberattack that has wreaked havoc on computers all across the world in recent days, said spokeswoman Toya Stewart Downey.

Classes continued as scheduled, she said.

Downey became aware of the outage around 6 a.m. The biggest impact was that families were not able to reach the schools to report absences or find out about bus issues, although she noted that a few calls were getting through.

Around 10 a.m., the district sent out text messages and posted on Twitter that " phone and e-mail service has been restored to most schools and sites. Thank you for your patience."

The district's Technology Services Department was working to fix the problem.

Tim Harlow • 612-673-7768