The Park City School District (PCSD) reported a comprehensive network and internet outage on Friday, April 24, 2026, which has effectively severed digital communications across all administrative offices and eight school campuses. The disruption, which was first identified at 6:12 AM MDT, has disabled internal local area networks (LAN), wide area network (WAN) connectivity, and all external internet access provided via the district’s primary fiber-optic backbone. The outage has halted standard digital operations during a critical period of the academic spring term.
Technical reports from the district’s Information Technology department indicate that the outage has impacted a wide array of critical services. Most notably, the district’s Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone system, which operates on a centralized Cisco Unified Communications Manager, is currently non-functional. This prevents incoming and outgoing calls at Park City High School, Treasure Mountain Junior High, Ecker Hill Middle School, and the district’s four elementary schools: Jeremy Ranch, McPolin, Parley’s Park, and Trailside. Additionally, the district-wide email system, hosted on Microsoft Exchange Server 2019, is inaccessible, and staff members are unable to utilize cloud-based educational tools, including the Canvas Learning Management System (v2026.04) and PowerSchool student information databases.
The outage affects approximately 4,500 students and nearly 600 faculty and staff members. While schools remain in session, the lack of connectivity has forced a shift to offline instructional methods. In a statement released via cellular-based emergency notification channels, Communications Director Heidi Matthews noted that the failure appears to be centralized within the district’s core routing infrastructure. Preliminary assessments have ruled out a simple service provider disruption, as the failure extends to internal VLAN routing and Active Directory authentication services, which are currently failing to process login requests across the district's domain.
Safety protocols have been adjusted to account for the loss of landline communications. School administrators are utilizing handheld radios and personal cellular devices to maintain contact between buildings and the district office. The Park City Police Department and local emergency services have been notified of the communications gap to ensure that emergency response remains coordinated despite the technical limitations. The district has requested that parents use the emergency SMS alert line for any urgent student-related inquiries until the primary systems are restored.
As of 2:30 PM MDT, IT personnel and external contractors are on-site at the district’s data center attempting to restore the primary gateway and troubleshoot potential hardware failures in the core switch fabric. There is currently no estimated time for full service restoration. The district has not yet confirmed whether the event is the result of a hardware malfunction, a fiber optic line break, or a cybersecurity-related incident. This event follows a series of infrastructure upgrades initiated by the district in late 2025, though officials have not yet linked the current failure to those specific system changes.