SEATTLE — Seattle Public Schools said it made improvements to the remote learning setup over the holiday weekend after parents and students experienced technical issues on the first day of school last week.
Over the weekend, the district asked all 64,000 remote learning students to download an update on the school-issued laptops. The update took two hours to install, and for some parents, it didn't install at all.
Seattle mother Molly Mitchell said connection issues were so bad that the family ultimately bailed and went for ice cream.
“I hope that we as parents can show grace and patience. Our educators also have families of their own they’re trying to work from home. It’s no doubt in my mind that they are doing everything they can to try to serve students in this pandemic that we have no playbook for,” Mitchell said.
Some families said Day 2 was slightly better than the first, but there were still instances of kids not being able to connect.
“We couldn’t get him into his Team meeting through the SPS platform, so it took us a half-hour, maybe an hour. We’re somewhat tech-savvy,” said mother Clare Kealy.
The district reminded parents that week one is a soft start of sorts. It anticipates making more upgrades and changes to the system through this week.