Albany County schools report network outage after fiber cut

A cut fiber line left Albany County School District #1 dealing with a network outage Friday morning, and the disruption landed squarely on the communication systems parents and staff rely on for daily school life. The district posted its alert at 7:01 a.m. on May 22, saying connectivity was affected across the system that serves 12 schools, two public charters, nearly 800 educators and 3,280 students in Laramie and across Albany County. In a district this size, a network problem can ripple far beyond internet access, slowing phones, email, attendance systems, classroom technology and the messages families expect when plans change.

The district said its carrier had already dispatched a repair crew, which put the pace of recovery in the hands of the telecom line outside district buildings. ACSD#1’s Emergency Alert Center says it is meant to share updates during emergencies and does not replace Remind, and the district has also been rolling out ParentSquare, a new communication platform announced April 13. That combination of channels matters when one system goes dark, especially for a school district that needs to keep parents informed about transportation, office operations and urgent notifications even when the network is unstable. The notice did not give a restoration timeline.

The timing added another layer of disruption. ACSD#1 schools listed May 25 as no school for Memorial Day, which meant the outage hit just before a holiday period rather than in the middle of a full instructional day, but the administrative burden still fell on district staff trying to keep communication moving. For families, the immediate issue was not only whether classroom tools were working, but whether the district could still push out reliable updates about school business during a stretch when schedules were already shifting.

The outage also points to how much of Albany County’s school infrastructure now depends on systems that sit outside the district’s direct control. ACSD#1’s contact structure routes computer and technology issues to Chief Information & Cybersecurity Officer Shawn Hime, with Superintendent Dr. John Goldhardt, who began July 1, 2022, and other senior administrators listed in the chain of communication. Those names matter because they are the people most likely to be handling the response, even as the repair work depends on the carrier. For a district with a public mission to provide safe and supportive schools, a single fiber cut became a countywide reminder that reliable communication is now part of basic school operations.