FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. (WSVN) - Students and parents in Broward County are experiencing some technical difficulties on their first day of virtual learning after spring break.
7News has learned that several school districts across the state are preparing to be closed until the beginning of May, which means students in Florida would be learning online for the next month.
Maya and Zach, her brother, are both in middle school, and they said they had trouble accessing the website, Monday.
“I was expecting it to be smoother than it was,” Maya said. “I wasn’t able to get any of the work to do or to get any of it done because the site wasn’t loading.”
Around 80,000 students in the district attempted to log in to the Broward County Public School’s virtual learning website, but it kept crashing, leaving them unable to access the lesson plans and assignments the teachers set out for them.
BCPS has around 300,000 students in the district.
“Everyone was just having trouble turning in assignments and just getting onto the website and using it,” Zach said.
BCPS Superintendent Robert Runcie said the issue stemmed from the capacity of the third party vendor’s website when users tried to log in at the same time.
“Essentially, what we saw today was a performance issue in terms of dealing with the capacity, so the system was slow, or some people weren’t able to get on,” Runcie said. “We had worked with them to anticipate it. They obviously didn’t do the job that we needed to. We resolved those issues today. Folks should see a different experience tomorrow.”
Cellphone videos taken by parents showed the website not allowing them nor the students to log into the system. When they were able to log in, they said the site would run very slow and the assignments were either not loading or nonexistent.
Others were able to log in but got kicked out shortly after.
The problems were not limited to students, as teachers like Brad Burke “couldn’t really access anything.”
“To be understanding to every aspect of this whole situation, I mean, this is unprecedented for everybody,” Burke said. “This is new for all of us, and so we’re all kind of trying different things and learning as we go.”
BCPS notified the parents addressing the technical issues and sent a statement to 7News saying in part, “We’re working as quickly as we can and expect the issue to be resolved shortly. We’re communicating with our families and appreciate everyone’s patience on this first day.”
It remains unclear what the capacity will be or if the capacity has been upgraded for Tuesday.
Meanwhile, several parents were able to pick up meals for their children at sites across Broward County, and it was a similar sight in Miami-Dade County.
Miami-Dade County Public Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho could be seen handing out hot meals in Hialeah, Monday. A total of 50 schools provided the free food for students while the district embarked on its second week of online learning.
At Miami Northwestern Senior High School, parents could be seen picking up computers for their children.
Carvalho warned parents that the transition to remote learning could last longer than expected.
“Probably not only will we complete April through distance learning, but we’ll go well into May,” Carvalho said.
However, teachers in both counties got created, and Mrs. Munoz could be seen welcoming her VPK students through a Zoom video conference and reading out loud.
Kendall Lakes Elementary School teacher Ingrid LaFarga made a studio in her home using items from her classroom to stream to her pre-K class.
Hundreds of thousands of students, like David Blanco, spent Monday adjusting to online learning, and technology has turned his home into an online classroom.
“I miss my friends very much,” David said.
“As long as we’re able to make sure that he gets to finish his school year, he’s still able to keep on top of his stuff and we stay healthy is the main concern,” Yesenia Mercedes, David’s mother, said.
A M-DCPS spokesperson said they will be lenient about attendance this week because of the new online system, but they will be stricter on attendance starting next Monday.
Runcie spoke about the technical difficulties students and teachers faced during a meeting on Tuesday morning.
“I thought it was a good day for us yesterday,” he said. “We did have some technical challenges with our online system on Canvas. We worked very closely with the vendor and the experience that we see today is substantially better than yesterday, so we’re encouraged by that.”
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