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With Internet service restored, testing resumes at Hernando schools

 
Published March 1, 2017

The Hernando County School District's Internet access — the shutdown of which delayed the start of computer-based standardized testing — was restored Tuesday evening, allowing teachers to start administering tests Wednesday.

Students had been scheduled to take the Florida Standards Assessment test on Monday morning, but were delayed because of the glitch. It affected students in the eighth grade and up, who take tests on computers, but not younger students who take paper tests, said district spokeswoman Karen Jordan.

As suspected, the problem was with the protective firewall on the state system, MyFlorida.com, which supplies filtered Internet service to Florida school districts, said Joe Amato, the district's supervisor of technology and information services.

"It was basically caused by the district being blacklisted," Amato said.

Neither his staffers nor those at the state network had identified the information that caused the denial, he said, but it was probably a sudden increase in the volume of traffic.

"We're looking at it very closely to see if there are any spikes that would indicate a problem," Amato said.