So I am teaching a grade 7 introduction to programming class. Initially we were using the downloaded scratch 1.4. It was great!

Scratch 2.0 is now cloud-based…great. Until someone (in our district…in our school…in my class…I have no idea) did something that got us blocked.

Now the entire class accounts have been locked out and the expiration is almost at the end of the course.

I fully support the need for students to be held accountable for their actions. If something was done by a student in my class I will also hold them accountable. However I am in a position where I suspect that my students are being punished for the sins of another individual from somewhere else.

If the district- or school-wide bans will continue to be a policy then I will unfortunately have to strongly considering downgrading to version 1.4 which would be a real shame since many of the 2.0 features have been a real benefit.

I would appreciate a response from a member of the Scratch team about how we can move forward with this; thank-you for your time.

Have a great day!

Often, the Scratch Team will ban the offending IP address if the offense is serious. I guess that your entire school shares one IP address, so one person kind of ruined it for you guys.
They aren't trying to ban the entire district, but that appears to be an unfortunate side effect. Anyway, you should contact the Scratch Team to explain the situation if you haven't already. This has happened before, and they will unban the IP.

Also, there will be a downloadable version of Scratch 2.0 later this summer if this happens again.

Yeah, that's unfortunate. Jvvg has described the situation accurately - you need to contact the Scratch Team directly and discuss the situation. There should be a contact form on the block page that you see for the site. If for some reason that is not showing up for you, use the help@scratch.mit.edu email.