New York City Mayor Eric Adams and the Department of Education were harshly criticized for numerous technical glitches as students and teachers tried to log on for virtual classes during the snow storm Tuesday, the New York Post reported.
Tuesday marked the first day of remote learning since the COVID-19 pandemic got off to a chaotic start as students and educators across the city suffered from "service unavailable" messages as they tried to access the DOE's learning systems.
"Perhaps the DOE should just let kids have a snow day," Adam Bergstein, an English teacher at Forest Hills High School in Queens, told the Post. "But, what do they give us, a system that fails and crashes miserably."
There were also problem reported across the city in accessing such crucial services as Google Classroom, Chromebooks, and Zoom.
Some teachers said they were having great difficulties even logging into their emails and taking attendance.
The DOE blamed the problems on tech company IBM, which is responsible for ensuring a smooth running of the remote system.
Furious parents and teachers said the city should have been much better prepared for remote learning.
"You can't pivot to remote, if you aren't prepared," a Queens high school teacher said. "I think that if you're going to pivot to remote you should make sure your server can handle it and you need to ensure every student has a device."
A mom of two elementary students told the New York Post that "we are real parents who have jobs. My husband is home now dealing with tech issues. The system is a joke. The kids are miserable."
The criticism came a day after Adams and Schools Chancellor David Banks defended the decision to switch to remote schooling as forecasters warned of heavy snowfall.
"If you are a parent, and you are not willing to navigate a computer for your child, that's a sad commentary," Adams said at a City Hall briefing announcing the school closures. "You can't tell me … you are frustrated about logging on to a computer — that's not acceptable to me. Our children fell behind during the pandemic. We need to catch up."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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