DENVER (KDVR) — Monday was the first day back to school for many large districts in Colorado but it did not come without a laundry list of problems; power outages, Zoom issues and WiFi problems.
Zoom tweeted, “If you’re having trouble connecting to Zoom, we have identified the issue and are working on a fix.”
Jennifer Williams, mother of two elementary students in Jefferson County said, “First day was a bit of an adventure, Zoom went down. My understanding is Zoom or Jeffco’s feed into Zoom got overwhelmed and it just couldn’t handle it.”
But she is trying to stay positive, “We’re going to get through. We are going to have smile and laugh at it because I don’t think there’s another option. We’re going to give the teachers and beautiful staff members grace and hope we get that back. And understand that computers fail and systems fail, but we’re going to try.”
Xcel Energy reported a power outage for 6,089 customers near Godson Elementary School in Denver.
“Crews are working to restore power as quickly and safely as possible. Please continue to check back for estimated restoration time updates. Thank you for your patience,” which was posted on Xcel’s online electric outage map Monday morning.
Tabitha Betz, mother of Denver Public Schools students, “it was rough, no breaks, just continuous online. I think it was hard too she saw a lot of her friends, but she can’t touch them. That was emotional, so we had a few breakdowns about that.”
She said it was difficult for parents as well, “Her school picked a different platform to communicate on. So now I’m working with 1-2-3-4-5 different platforms to not only communicate but for my kids to be in school it’s just insanity. I already called the teacher and said don’t expect her back. I’m not doing this. I will figure it out on my own. When I call the school no one answers.”
Comcast/Xfinity also reported WiFi issues on Monday.
“It’s a little nervous. The school is taking precautions, following medical guidelines, not crazy like some states are. So we are trusting the leadership,” David Lyons, father of Douglas County student said.
Renee Cramer Bornemann, whose son is a sophomore in Jefferson County public schools said, “It’s actually going pretty good. Better than I thought. You know there’s challenges, but that’s life. You roll with it, deal with it. I think it’s helping him adapt to things. Nothing ever goes perfect in life. Nothing goes as planned. This is teaching them how to deal with it, what steps to take, what’s important. Just be flexible and work with people.”
Jefferson County Public Schools experienced another issue. They reported in a written statement:
“We had some families report issues with logging in to Jeffco systems and viewing our website, and we had a couple of virtual class/parent meetings interrupted by “bad actors” who displayed various types of inappropriate material during these live sessions.
Both Zoom and Schoology had issues nationally this weekend and into this morning that caused them to not work. Some teachers and school staff, in their excitement to welcome students back and to ensure the learning began, implemented workarounds that unfortunately involved systems and protocols that were not in line with our official guidance and best practices for holding virtual classes and meetings.
In addition, due to wanting to allow the most flexibility for our families to choose their learning environment preference (in-person/hybrid or remote only), many schools were still adjusting class rosters late into last week and even this morning. This caused some log jams in the systems that our registration and rostering program feeds and some families were not able to log in for lessons at designated class times.
Staff have been previously provided training and guidance, however we will be reinforcing the protocols, guidance, and best practices for conducting online classes and meetings today.
Additionally, we have a special help option for our educators that has been up since August 14 with all day Ed Tech Support Office Hours – a virtual “hotline” for educators to get assistance with and troubleshoot issues with any Jeffco system staffed by our ed tech experts. We are reminding all staff of this option as well.
Along with those two reminders, we have stressed to all schools the importance of following all district guidelines and protocols for holding digital meetings, rather than implementing workarounds that potentially compromise the experience for students. Again, as of now, most of these issues have been resolved and our first day of learning is nearly complete. We do not anticipate having further issues like today, at least with our own systems.”
Jefferson County Public Schools
