MHS Replacing Digital Files After System Failure

School starts next Thursday and making sure high school students and teachers have their schedules on time has been a challenge this summer.

On Thursday, Merrimack School District Superintendent Marge Chiafery said a "catastrophic failure" with the school's computer system resulted in a massive loss of data including grades from last year and schedules for this year.

In July, Chiafery said, a large chunk of the school's data files, dating back to March 15, disappeared without a trace. It was no one's fault, there wasn't button pushed that forced the files to go away and there was nothing malicious behind it.

Though Chiafery couldn't pinpoint what happened, she said it is a good thing the school still keeps hard copies of their files.

For the last several weeks between seven to 10 members of the school's administration and guidance department has been working to restore all of the data that went missing, including the class schedules that need to be ready for students by Sept. 1.

She said she and Principal Ken Johnson both feel confident that everything will be restored by then.

"It's been a major project from which we've learned a lot," Chiafery said. "We learned how important it is to back up your back up."

She said the school district has considered going completely digital, but this has taught them that they need to be better prepared and protect files better before they can consider dropping hard files. 

"We were just blessed that people in an overseeing capacity kept hard copies of these files," Chiafery said.