Remote learning at NYC public schools gets off to rocky start

Many public school students attempting to log on to the first remote snow day in New York City were greeted with error messages on Tuesday, as families were told to keep trying because the system was overwhelmed.

Parents at home with their kids due to a snowstorm said they were having difficulties with an array of platforms and devices, including Chromebooks, Google Classroom, Zoom, Outlook, TeachHub and the citywide attendance app.

UPDATE: IBM has added capacity and improvements are rolling out across the system.⁰⁰For context: IBM provides support to validate NYCPS users logging in to NYCPS systems (Single Sign On) and verifying the user name and password. https://t.co/GkCuFzQAEd

— NYC Public Schools (@NYCSchools) February 13, 2024

Schools Chancellor David Banks said he was “angry” at a press conference, and blamed IBM, which handles authentication for remote learning platforms. The city’s public schools use IBM for single sign-on, which allows students to log in to multiple different remote learning platforms with the same username and password. But if IBM's tool goes down, all the other remote learning platforms do, too.

"IBM was not ready for prime time. That's what happened here… We told them 1 million students would be coming online to go to school. They said they were overwhelmed with the surge,” he said.

"This was a test. I don't think we passed this test,” he added. "It was not a wasted day, but it was a frustrating day for far too many parents.”

Banks apologized and emphasized that the problems had been largely resolved after a rough morning. Roughly 850,000 students and staff were logged in, he said at the 11:30 a.m. press conference.

But some parents said they’d given up trying to log in and opted to take their kids sledding instead.

“Very frustrating,” said Ariella Simeone, a parent of two elementary schoolers in Brooklyn who took her kids to Prospect Park after trying to sign on for about an hour.

“My kids are disappointed. They wanted to see their friends on screen. I have two DOE devices and both are facing system errors,” she said.

IBM said in a statement that the company regretted the inconvenience and was working with the city to resolve the problems as quickly as posssible.

On Monday, Mayor Eric Adams and Schools Chancellor David Banks had said they were confident about their decision to shift to remote learning, vowing that the system was ready to go.

“We feel really good about this,” Banks said Monday. “We’ve taken some time as a school system to do simulations and prepare for this. And it’s one of the good things that, in fact, emerged from the pandemic, was our preparedness to be ready for moments like this.”

Adams was even more strident.

“If you are a parent and you are not willing to navigate a computer for your child, that’s a sad commentary,” Adams said. “Showing our children that difficulties come and we overcome that, that’s what it’s all about. You can’t tell me Mommy took me with her arthritic knees on a snow day and you are frustrated about logging on to a computer. That’s not acceptable to me.”

Banks acknowledged that the decision to not give students a traditional “snow day” where schools were closed was at least partially the result of the crowded public schools calendar. Gothamist has previously reported that holidays recently added to the calendar have made meeting the legally required 180 school days a logistical challenge.

But the technology problems had parents and educators fuming.

“Lol it’s such a clusterf---,” said a Bronx principal who requested anonymity to protect his job. ”We worked so hard to be able to pivot and the infrastructure can’t handle it.”

Councilmember Rita Joseph, who chairs the City Council’s education committee, said she struggled to get her eighth grade son online.

“As a parent, I woke my son up, tried to log on around 8, we couldn’t log on,” Joseph said. “We tried it several times, and I called the chancellor and said this is what’s happening.”

“NYCPS, they dropped the ball and they need to go back, analyze, assess and move forward,” she said.

Joseph, a former teacher, said she was shocked that remote learning was still plagued by glitches despite the many months she spent in front of computers during the pandemic.

“I taught straight through the pandemic, this is revisiting trauma for me,” she said. “I will find out what happened, what went wrong, and how do they plan on doing this in the future?”

Sarah Allen, a teacher and parent in Brooklyn, said her second grader was able to log in to her morning meeting, but the teachers had no luck.

“Someone just said, ‘guys — there are no teachers coming — let’s PARTY.’ Screams of joy, followed by dancing,” Allen posted on X.