Juneau School District gives response to scam

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Friday, March 24, 2023 at 12:22 PM

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Juneau, Alaska (KINY) - Superintendent Bridget Weiss with the Juneau School District joined Action Line to talk about a variety of topics.

Dr. Weiss gave information about $259,000-$269,000 that was scammed from the Juneau School District in December of 2022.

"We were basically scammed by someone who impostered one of our vendors. Of course, we have protocols in place. We have checks and balances when we received the scam. We did take one precautionary step," she said. "But as good scammers do, they had gone one step further and we're prepared for that. So we did end up making a couple payments to the scammer."

Here are ways the Juneau School District attempts to prevent scams like this from taking place in the future.

"The other thing that is important to know is that we do cyber-attack safety security training as a district and we do that every year. Each of our employees is required to do a training to protect us. We also have some internal systems built into our email system where people can report what looks like a phishing attack," she explained. "We send out testers throughout the year to see if people are responding and watching and if not, then we retrain. So we monitor how well we are guarded against some of these attacks."

They have added more layers to their internal controls so they're more protected and they're also looking into insurance to cover incidents like these.

Dr. Weiss also shared what's happened this week with the base student allocation bill in the House Education Committee.

"Currently it  sits at a different approach where the BSA would increase over the course of the next two years. So currently with the current amendments, it' s some increase in FY 24. And then additional in FY 25," Dr. Weiss said. " A total over those two years of an $800 increase over the $30  that we know is committed for next year. We're encouraged it has a ways to go yet. Now it will go in front of the House Finance Committee, lots of opportunity yet for variations to come out, but we are  encouraged at this point."       

Dr. Weiss will leave her position as the JSD Superintendent on Jun. 30.

The Board is entertaining three candidates this weekend in Juneau.

Interviews will begin this upcoming Monday and Tuesday, and Dr. Weiss explained how the public can become involved.

"I  do want to let people know that there are bios on our website. So if people want to meet these three candidates in advance, those bios are on the juneauschools.org website along with videos, a quick 15-minute video or so of each one answering some questions and a survey is there."  

Go to the website and on the right-hand side of the home page under "News", find the links to learn more about the candidates.

Listen to the full Action Line on KINYRADIO.COM.

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