Parts of the north-east US were hit on Tuesday by a snowstorm that canceled and delayed flights, made roads slippery and prompted many school districts to cancel classes or switch to remote learning – or at least try to switch.
In New York City, the online learning system that serves the nation’s largest school district experienced technical problems first thing in the morning, preventing many of the 915,000 students from logging into Zoom. The school system’s administrators had announced the day before that all of its schools would close due to severe weather and that “all instruction will take place remotely”.
On Tuesday morning, however, students found they could not sign on for remote learning. “We are currently experiencing issues with services that require IBM authentication to login. We are actively working with IBM to resolve,” the New York City department of education tweeted early on Tuesday.
The education department did not cancel remote school. Throughout the day and amid a flurry of negative tweets, the agency tweeted screenshots of classrooms that had successfully logged on. School officials said they were working to fix the issue, which they said involved authentication services.
A lunchtime tweet from the bureau read: “We are doing everything we can to get this right and we have over 1 million students, teachers and users that have been able to log in since this morning. We apologize to the families and staff who were impacted by this, and we thank everyone for their patience.”
The city’s decision to push ahead with remote learning instead of declaring a snow day had drawn criticism from many parents and students, and the problems with the online system exacerbated that discontent.
Chong Bretillon, a parent in Queens, said she received repeated errors as she tried to gain entry to a Zoom room for her elementary school student, while messaging with dozens of other parents who were encountering the same problems.
“I just spent almost an hour trying to log in and log out,” Bretillon said. “Everyone’s frustrated.”
The New York mayor, Eric Adams, defended the decision to go remote in the schools, saying it was necessary because of learning losses during the coronavirus pandemic.
The highest snowfall totals, about 8in (20cm) and possibly more in some locations, were expected from the northern New York City suburbs to Connecticut, Rhode Island and south-eastern Massachusetts, according to the National Weather Service. Wind gusts of up to 60mph (96km/h) and some coastal flooding were possible along the Massachusetts coast.
In Connecticut, Governor Ned Lamont ordered all executive branch office buildings closed to the public for the day, and all state courts were closed.
Susan Smith was spending the day with her three children, ages 14, 11 and eight, at her home in Columbia, Connecticut, because schools were closed. She said she liked traditional snow days off, but would also like to see remote learning on some bad weather days.
“But I still remember being a kid and really looking forward to snow days, so I don’t want to completely wipe that off the map with remote learning,” Smith said.
Ahead of the storm, the Massachusetts governor, Maura Healey, told all non-essential executive branch employees to not report to work on Tuesday. Boston schools were closing and a parking ban was in effect until 4pm. Similar closures and bans were put in place in other cities and towns. Emergency officials had equipment in place to help keep roads clear.
