The Concord School District is investigating multiple reports of high school students being subjected to inappropriate content during remote classes, and officials say they don’t yet know whether the activity was from an outside hacker.
In one case, officials believe a student impersonated someone else and logged into class with a nude photo as the account holder’s profile picture. Director of Technology Pam McLeod said the teacher immediately removed that person from the online Zoom session.
The district has also received reports that a group of high school students may have been exposed to a sexually explicit video and/or images, but McLeod said she has not received confirmation from any students or teachers who were directly affected.
Social media posts about a potential “Zoom-bombing” incident began to show up late Wednesday. One parent posted that loud music interrupted a class, and then a naked man appeared on the screen. A short time later, she said, a video of a naked woman stopped the class.
Zoom-bombing is a shared fear among educators since many schools throughout the country transitioned from in-person to remote learning due to health risks posed by the new coronavirus. Hooksett Memorial School dealt with a recent Zoom-bombing during a parent information session of third-graders, which was interrupted by drawings of phallus and swastikas on the screen. The meeting was immediately shut down and reported to the local police.
McLeod said fear of the unknown is definitely a challenge for teachers navigating remote learning. She said she hopes Concord students and parents will come forward in the coming days and share with the district any evidence they have of an inappropriate incident.
Some students may have captured the images and shared them with other students via social media.
“I understand that there are a lot of TikTok and Snapchat videos going around about it. I’m hoping to see one of those so I can better understand what happened,” McLeod said. “We’re looking at the logs for classes to try to identify what members of the student body may have been involved and which parents may have concerns.”
In addition to notifying the school, parents and teachers are mandatory reporters under state law and must report to police or the state’s Division for Children, Youth and Families if they have knowledge that children were exposed to sexually explicit content over the internet. Concord police were contacted and are looking into the incident, Chief Bradley Osgood said.
At least one parent alerted the Concord School District community about people posting on the video-sharing social networking service TikTok, asking high school students to give them their Zoom login codes, and then they promise something outrageous will happen in class.
McLeod said she wouldn’t be surprised if that’s happening and noted that the district will be looking into whether a student may have shared his or her account information at any point. She said she was on the phone with Zoom technical support Thursday morning to review login data and try to understand what information is available to aid in the district’s investigation.
“Our Zoom links are posted by the teachers in internal systems, like Google Classroom, and only students with accounts can access those links,” she said. “We do have Zoom security measures in place as the default for all teachers in the district, including waiting rooms.”
The district was cautious about implementing remote learning through Zoom due to reports across the country of security issues with the platform this past spring, McLeod said. Since then, teachers have received extensive training, and all classes use the waiting rooms feature so that teachers can see who has logged in and approve each account to enter an active session, she said. Zoom also allows students to break out into small group sessions – an option other platforms like Google classroom, which was used by the district in the spring, don’t allow for.
As district officials try to get to the bottom of what happened, they’re handling another incident that also happened during school Wednesday over Zoom.
Parents of students in a physical education class were notified by Assistant Principal Kaileen Chilauskas of “racist and harmful” remarks made by someone impersonating another student. Chilauskas wrote to parents to inform them about the incident and to ask them to have a follow-up conversation with their children.
“A classroom is a sacred space and we are taking the fact that people violated that space very seriously,” she wrote. “All school rules apply to virtual learning, including inappropriate, unsafe, or harmful behaviors. Students will lose the ability to participate and depending on the severity of the violation, could face much stronger consequences.”
Chilauskas said the district will look into who is responsible, but noted that doing so takes time.
By phone Thursday, McLeod said the remarks were made in the Zoom’s chat function, and that officials have retrieved that information as part of their investigation.
Granite State News Collaborative contributed to this report.