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D-428 considers moving adult-living class By BRITTANY KEEPERMAN bkeeperman@shawmedia.com DeKALB – The administrator in charge of special education at DeKalb School District 428 wants to move its transitional education program to an empty building at the Kishwaukee Education Consortium
on the campus of Kishwaukee Community College. “It creates an environment where opportunities for vocational skill development are more accessible,” said Cristy Meyer, the district’s director of special education. “We have janitorial, child care and food service all right there in walk-
ing distance.” Threshholds: Stepping Into Life is District 428’s program for 18- to 21-year-old students with special needs. Every student who has an individualized education program is eligible for the transitional education program until age 22. The program is housed at DeKalb High
School and has 11 students. Meyer would like to move the class to an unused mass communications classroom, which has an additional connected space that could be modeled as a studio apartment where students could focus on independent living skills, Meyer said.
“I’m really excited about this possibility,” she said. “It puts all the skills our students need to transition successfully to the adult world in one space.” The relocation plan would need approval from, the District 428 school board as well as the Kishwaukee Education Consortium board. Officials would
need to secure funding to transform the classroom as well. A lot needs to be worked out before the program is approved, said Jamie Craven, KEC board member and superintendent of Rochelle’s Township High
See CLASS, page A8
Power grid vulnerable to foreign hacks
HOLIDAY FUN GETTING ON TRACK
By GARANCE BURKE and JONATHAN FAHEY The Associated Press
Photos by Danielle Guerra - dguerra@shawmedia.com
Cuddling under a blanket, Jessica Gorham puts daughter Sofia Doktor, 2, on her lap Friday while daughter Avery Gorham (right), 6, waits for the Waterman Holiday Lights Train to start along the tracks in Waterman Lions Park.
Brighter than ever Waterman Holiday Lights Train makes a comeback By KATIE SMITH ksmith@shawmedia.com WATERMAN – Pete’s Holiday Lights Train is back and brighter than ever after suffering about $20,000 worth of damage caused by vandalism to its displays last year. Wearing a train conductor’s suit and a Santa hat with Mickey Mouse ears, Pete Robinson, the man behind the holiday attraction, greeted the train’s passengers Sunday with cheer seemingly unaffected by last year’s vandalism. “We ran that night and we had 3,200 people” Robinson said. “And that’s when I said, ‘Now we’re going to really kick some butt,’ ” This year the attraction, a
Web poll Have you ever taken a ride on the Holiday Lights Train in waterman? Vote at daily-chronicle.com free, seasonal Christmas-themed lights display and tour, and Santa meet-and-greet, features 300,000 lights. Wire frames, bulbs and other structures that were damaged have since been replaced or rebuilt entirely. Meanwhile, two new displays have also been dedicated to members of owner Pete Robinson’s family, he said.
See TRAIN, page A8
Peering over his cup of hot chocolate, Elliot Kupp, 7, of Lee, tries to fog his glasses with the steam while waiting his turn Friday for the Waterman Holiday Lights Train in Waterman Lions Park.
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SAN JOSE, Calif. – Security researcher Brian Wallace was on the trail of hackers who had snatched a California university’s housing files when he stumbled into a larger nightmare: Cyberattackers had opened a pathway into the networks running the United States’ power grid. Digital clues pointed to Iranian hackers. And Wallace found that they had already taken passwords, as well as engineering drawings of dozens of power plants, at least one with the title “Mission Critical.” The drawings were so detailed that experts said skilled attackers could have used them, along with other tools and malicious code, to knock out electricity flowing to millions of homes. Wallace was astonished. But this breach, The Associated Press has found, was not unique. About a dozen times in the past decade, sophisticated foreign hackers have gained enough remote access to control the operations networks that keep the lights on, according to top experts who spoke only on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the subject matter. The public almost never learns the details about these types of attacks – they’re rarer but also more intricate and potentially dangerous than data theft. Information about the government’s response to these hacks is often protected and sometimes classified; many are never even reported to the government. These intrusions have not caused the kind of cascading blackouts that are feared by the intelligence community. But so many attackers have stowed away in the systems that run the U.S. electric grid that experts said they likely have the capability to strike at will. And that’s what worries Wallace and other cybersecurity experts most. “If the geopolitical situation changes and Iran wants to target these facilities, if they have this kind of information it will make it a lot easier,” said Robert M. Lee, a former U.S. Air Force cyberwarfare operations officer. In 2012 and 2013, in well-publicized attacks, Russian hackers successfully sent and received encrypted commands to U.S. public utilities and power generators; some private firms concluded this was an effort to position interlopers to act in the event of a political crisis. And the Department of Homeland Security announced about a year ago that a separate hacking campaign, believed by some private firms to have Russian
See GRID, page A8
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