Orange launches school year online

District leaders say start a success despite log-in issues and slowdowns

Orange County’s public schools started classes Monday with all students working online, a schoolyear launch district leaders said was mostly successful despite slowdowns and log-in problems that frustrated some students and parents.

“For our first day, we thought it went phenomenally well,” said Superintendent Barbara Jenkins, speaking at the Orange County coronavirus briefing Monday afternoon. “We expected some glitches. It will get better as the week carries on.”

All Orange students will be studying online until Aug. 21. After that, about 30 percent are to switch to in-person classes on campus. The rest plan to remain at home doing virtual lessons for at least seven more weeks.

Because of concerns about COVID-19, the Orange school district, like the others in Central Florida, gave parents the option of on-campus or online learning. Most chose the live, online option, dubbed LaunchEd, to start the 2020-21 school year.

Some students struggled to log in for their classes in the morning, but by 3 p.m. there had been more than 756,000 launches of the district’s online applications, Jenkins said.

“We appreciate the patience and understanding of our students and parents,” Jenkins said, adding that students face no penalties if computer problems kept them from their online classes.

“It is a year like no other we have experienced,” she said.

On Facebook, where the district posted a similar message, many parents seemed understanding and said their children’s experience had been mostly positive.

“I understand there will be glitches and some problems when it comes to computer!” one mother wrote. “Onward together! We got this.”

Another wrote, “Great first day! Had no issues! Teachers have been awesome!”

But Chris Pratt, whose three children attend Orlando Gifted Academy, said all his kids had trouble joining their online

classes, leaving them frustrated as he and his wife scrambled to help them.

“I was 15 minutes late for a call, and I’ve got a kid in tears whom I’m tying to talk down,” he said.

Pratt’s oldest, 10-year-old Samuel, said he had the most problems with his classes that relied on BigBlueButton, a web conferencing system that some Orange teachers use for live, video-based classes.

“It was a lot of trouble. It took forever,” said the sixth grader. “Some of the students were able to do everything, and it went smoothly for them. Those were like the lucky few.”

Samuel said he worried most when, in his second period class, “I missed a lot of what my teacher said.” He was able, however, to speak with that instructor later, and he said she reassured him he’d be fine.

Pratt said he doesn’t think the district made enough capacity upgrades, given the new demand for online classes, and fears the problems will continue in the coming weeks. “To me it feels preventable, honestly,” he added.

Some on Facebook shared the same frustration. “It’s not hard math to figure out server/bandwidth needs for this to be successful …Terrible planning!”

wrote one man.

District leaders said they increased their system’s capacity to prepare for increased numbers of users logging into its systems this month, mindful of some of the problems reported in the spring when schools closed and students had to study online from home.

“We’ve put down the groundwork for it to be smoother,” said Maurice Draggon, senior director for digital learning, speaking to reporters Friday

Still Monday there were still “slowdowns” and “systems issues,” the district said, particularly midmorning when there were about “110,000 concurrent logins.”

Jenkins said they expect improvements in coming days, adding the system managed 4,000 simultaneous video conferencing sessions Monday.

She also urged parents to remind their children the problems are most likely temporary. “Help our students to remain calm during these first days,” she said.

The Seminole County school district will be the first to have in-person classes when its year begins Aug. 17. It will offer both oncampus and online classes starting that day. The Lake and Osceola county school districts will do the same starting Aug. 24.