Back when I worked on the instruction side of the overly-large school district, we tried to maintain a good relationship with the people in IT.

Even so, we were pretty sure that most of them really didn’t understand the people they were supposed to be supporting. That was especially true of the folks working on network security.

Based on the cybersecurity test IT ran last week as schools were wrapping up the year, not much has changed.

As students settled in for the last day of school Friday in Fairfax County, teachers around the school system opened their inboxes to an unexpected email.

It seemed kind. The email was seemingly sent from the school district — complete with a Fairfax County Public Schools logo — thanking employees for their work and offering gift cards as a sign of appreciation.

But teachers who clicked the link didn’t get a gift card.

They had just been phished — sort of.

Ok, I understand the need to train staff on how to avoid getting the network hacked, especially after the big ransomware attack the district went through a few years ago.

But running a test like this on the last day of school is pretty clueless. No one learns anything from the exercise, and everyone assumes district administration is even more out of touch than usual.

Walrod [teacher organization rep] said teachers were generally frustrated by the email but also found a bit of humor in the situation, joking that people should have known the gift cards weren’t real.

“We know this one was real because they didn’t offer us anything,” Walrod said of Reid’s [the superintendent] apology.

Yep, nothing has changed in the overly-large school district.

Happy summer break, everyone.

In the photo, that Spam has no phish, but may or may not come with bad links. :-)