Website Crashes and Cyberattacks Welcome Students Back to School


9 September, 2020

A ransomware attack forced Hartford, Conn., to call off the first day of classes. A website crash left many of Houston�s 200,000 students staring at error messages. And a server problem in Virginia Beach disrupted the first hours back to school there.

For millions of American schoolchildren, the Tuesday after Labor Day traditionally marks the end of summer vacation and the start of the first day of classes. But this year, instead of boarding buses and lugging backpacks, many students opened their laptops for online instruction at home, only to encounter technical glitches.

For Jessica Rios, the problems for her four children in Houston schools started early. Following a video conference with their teacher on Tuesday morning, her second-grade son and his classmates were supposed to log into the district�s online learning hub. Quickly, the children started unmuting themselves to complain, Ms. Rios said.

�All of them in the class were like, �It�s not loading,� �It�s showing an error,� �It�s saying unavailable,�� she said. Then her three other children encountered problems, too.

�The district had five months, which I feel was ample enough time for them to be able to work at least the major kinks out,� Ms. Rios said. In a news conference, the district�s interim superintendent, Grenita Lathan, acknowledged the problem and asked for patience.

Districts that returned before Labor Day have faced similar issues. In Philadelphia, students had trouble logging on last week because of a server issue. North Carolina schools encountered a statewide software problem on the first day back last month. And some families in Seattle, which had a sort of trial run for school on Friday, said they were kicked out of class calls or had difficulty connecting to text chats and camera feed.
�A lot of districts are just wildly unprepared for online learning,� Morgan Polikoff, a professor of education at the University of Southern California, said. �Not because they�re incompetent or aren�t trying; they just don�t have the expertise to do this.�

He said some of the technical issues stemmed from a lack of sufficient preparation for online learning over the summer, when many districts were still focused on opening in person � until surging coronavirus cases in much of the country and concern by parents and teachers forced many to reverse course.

But those issues, he said, are merely a symptom of a larger problem faced by the nation�s 13,000 school districts: a lack of guidance from state and federal education officials. Rather than receiving recommendations for best practices and coordinated purchasing plans, districts large and small were largely left on their own while tackling the huge challenge of finding virtual learning platforms and signing contracts within a few months.