EFFINGHAM, Ill. (WCIA) — The Effingham School District has been without technology for two weeks now. Their superintendent talked for the first time about steps they’re taking to get it back — and prevent future network issues.

On the morning of Feb. 9, Effingham School District’s network went out. Superintendent Andrew Johnson said he originally thought it was a power outage in the area.

“Once we got into it deeper, we found out that it was a far bigger problem than that,” said Johnson.

But when he realized his schools were the only ones affected, he knew something was wrong.

“We have obviously been in contact with law enforcement right out of the gate. Not knowing and still not knowing for sure everything that’s going on,” said Johnson.

Since the outage they’ve been working with an investigative group, and since it’s still ongoing he can’t share everything right now.  But he is certain that no one’s information has been compromised.

“Every single day as we move forward. We’re getting more and more and more things back that we couldn’t utilize at the point that we were interrupted,” said Johnson.

Now the district is doing all it can to ensure it doesn’t happen again. And they’re trying to prevent it from happening to others as well.

“Try to make sure you keep a close eye on what people are experiencing in other communities or in your own community,” said Johnson.

But some good did come out of the outage.

“Always building that backup plan to make sure your business or organization is using technology that also plans for the day that you may not have it to still function,” said Johnson.

It could take weeks to months for the district to be fully operational again. But access will come back little by little over the course of that time.