When students arrived at the Foothill Technology High School (Foothill Tech) campus on Friday, Nov. 19, 2021, they were greeted by a school-wide wifi outage. All Ventura Unified School District (Ventura Unified) routers were down, forcing teachers and students to adapt lesson plans to exclude technology. 

The outage began before students arrived on campus at 8 a.m. and didn’t return to full function until 11 a.m. during the middle of fourth period. Usually, minor outages can be resolved within the hour, but the IT techs on campus had to communicate with the internet provider to ultimately get the wifi up and running. 

However, many first period teachers took advantage of the change of circumstances and allowed students to partake in activities outside the classroom such as scavenger hunts and kickball in the quad. Those who needed immediate access to the internet were also allowed to use their personal devices and hotspots to complete their work. 

Once the connection was re-established and maintained, students and teachers resumed their normal Friday routines in preparation for the upcoming Thanksgiving break.