Wayne-Westland Community Schools left staff, students, and parents struggling to communicate after a district-wide internet and phone outage on Tuesday, Dec. 3. Later that week, the district confirmed the outage was caused by a cyberattack, with WXYZ reporting that the district worked to return to normal operations by the weekend following the attack.
The same day as the cyberattack, however, concerns about school safety were also raised at Wayne Memorial High. Wayne-Westland district announced on Facebook that Wayne Memorial would be closed Dec. 4, citing a potential threat. The post directed families to a letter issued by Interim Superintendent Jennifer Curry, who wrote: “We want to inform you that Wayne Memorial High School administration has been made aware of a potential threat. We are working closely with the Wayne Police Department to investigate this matter thoroughly. Out of an abundance of caution, there will be no school Wednesday, December 4, 2024.”
Though district officials did not directly link the cyberattack and threat at Wayne Memorial High School, parents expressed frustration over the lack of communication from officials. Without an official parent-teacher organization, concerned parents were left to voice their concern on social media, including the unofficial Facebook group for the school district, where there were also unconfirmed reports of bullets being found along with the police presence at the school that day.
Surena Marie Stewart, a parent of a student attending the school questioned, “I’m still confused as to what happened at Wayne Memorial yesterday… staff wouldn’t tell me anything, while my child was still in the building. Heard bullets were found, then all of the tech is out?? What’s really going on??” Another user, Kim Stokes, added: “My coworker was telling me her daughter lives in that area and the SWAT team was walking around with guns searching. What the hell is happening in this district?”
While stray bullets were recently found inside Dearborn and Riverview high schools in November, district officials have not publicly confirmed that bullets were found at Wayne Memorial, nor whether the potential threat and the cyberattack were related. However, the combination of these incidents has added to growing concerns about school safety measures within the area.
