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MIAMI (WSVN) - Miami-Dade County Public Schools held its first school board meeting since the district hit with issues, glitches and cyberattacks to its online learning system during the first week of school.
Although the opinions are mixed throughout the county, the frustration ran deep with the hundreds of parents and teachers who participated in the public comment section of the Wednesday meeting.
“My students are struggling to even use their email,” a teacher said. “We were not given any information.”
“I think it’s ridiculous to use Microsoft Teams with fourth-graders,” a woman said.
The public comment portion of the meeting lasted for hours following the botched start to the new school year last week. Tens of thousands of students and teachers were locked out of virtual classes for days as the district fumbled with a faulty server while simultaneously being hit with dozens of cyberattacks and experiencing glitches with the $15 million K12 platform.
“This is my 13th school opening, and I have to say probably one of the most difficult ones, one of the most challenging ones,” M-DCPS Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said.
A Miami-Dade student, who attended South Miami Senior High School, was later arrested for allegedly deploying some of the cyberattacks.
“I don’t think we’re still ready,” M-DCPS Board Member Dr. Marta Perez said. “I don’t think we have the amount of time that is necessary to put something in place and train all of the different users. Overwhelmingly, our teachers are begging us to let go of that system and allow them to use the systems they were using in the spring.”
K12 CEO Nate Davis apologized for the hiccups in a letter to the school board that read in part, “To this day, we continue to make changes to resolve issues and make improvements. We remain committed to the MIami-Dade school district and their plans to provide an innovative solution for seamless integration between online and in building instruction.”
All of the issues occurred as South Florida experiences a downward trend in COVID-19 cases. However, the date when students could possibly return to campus remains unknown.
“We cannot allow the failure of the K12 platform and a bad publicity of its poor performance to be a common excuse to rush back in-person learning,” a meeting attendee said.
“Open the schools, please,” another meeting attendee said. “You’re killing us here.”
Carvalho plans to address the cyberattacks and other issues with a 12-step program, but he has yet to speak in Wednesday’s meeting.
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