First day of online school turned into virtual mess, parents say
Chaos and confusion at TDSB as many face technical glitches and classes without teachers
Like thousands of parents in the Toronto District School Board, Carlie Fuller woke up early Tuesday morning in preparation for what was supposed to be her daughter’s first day of virtual school.
Instead, she was met with “an absolute nightmare” — one shared with many other families who complained of technical problems, classes without teachers, and hours spent on hold trying to get help.
Chaos and confusion reigned on day one of virtual school in the country’s largest school board as it wrestled with the unprecedented task of setting up online learning for 78,000 students in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As of Tuesday, the board was still scrambling to hire up to 150 additional teachers for the virtual school. Students with no teacher were instructed to begin independent learning with the content made available on the online platform.
But for some families, simply logging in to the system proved to be a frustrating task.
Fuller got an email Monday night with instructions for how to set up her daughter Sophia’s account, but when she tested it, she received an error saying it wasn’t set up.
At 8 a.m. Tuesday, not a minute after the IT support system had opened up, she began attempting to reach someone for answers.
“I couldn’t even get into the chat queue until 8:30 a.m. and it times out after about an hour,” she said. When she spoke to the Star at 1:30 p.m., she was taking a break from queueing — a task she’d started more than five hours earlier.
“I’ve been in four separate chat queues. I’ve been trying to call the number that’s on the website for technical support, and I can’t even get through to that.” Throughout the day, the TDSB Twitter account was flooded with similar concerns tweeted from equally confused and disappointed parents, all struggling to get their child online for their first day of classes.
“It’s great that it’s not just me experiencing this, but it’s also terrible that it’s not just me,” she said of what was supposed to be her daughter’s first day in junior kindergarten.
Ryan Bird, the media relations manager for the TDSB, acknowledged Tuesday there were some glitches the IT department was actively looking into.
“But we are aiming to try to get all virtual learners up and running this week,” he said. The board announced on Monday night it would stagger the start of classes for some students.
It wasn’t just the parents who were struggling to get online
Tuesday morning. Randy Ray, a French immersion teacher with the virtual elementary school, still hadn’t been able to connect with his students by 1:30 p.m.
He learned later, during a scheduled Zoom meeting with administrators, that in addition to French immersion, he’d also be responsible for covering English but with no additional time in the day.
“I think this is something they haven’t really considered, and hopefully it will change,” he said.
James Frodyma, a parent to three young children enrolled in the TDSB virtual school, managed to only get one of his kids online Monday night. But when he logged on Tuesday morning, the only part of their first day of school routine they were able to complete was posing for a photo with their backpacks on.
“It’s a total mess,” he said. “My third-grader’s teacher sent a message at 8:30 a.m. that he’s out sick today, my first-grader has no teacher assigned and my little guy is starting JK and TDSB didn’t activate his account.”
He was on hold with the IT support services Tuesday morning for an hour before his call finally went through. And then in the middle, it got disconnected.
“It’s just really frustrating,” he said, adding he doesn’t blame the board for the delays, but he can’t help but be disappointed for what was supposed to be an exciting day for his kids.
“I’ve counted, and they’ve been out of school for almost 200 days,” he said. Public school students in Toronto have been out of school since March Break when restrictions around the pandemic forced their closure. “They were really bummed out.” The TDSB provided a downto-the-wire change Monday night when they said some virtual elementary students wouldn’t be able to be part of the synchronous learning Tuesday morning, as there weren’t enough teachers.
Bird confirmed in a phone call that the board was short 500 teachers before the start of virtual school, but they had recently been able to hire 300 more at the last minute. While they still needed to fill up to 150 positions, he said they were “hoping to get teachers online as fast as possible” before the end of the week.
Keeping families informed about these changes though, Fuller points out, could have reduced some of the frustration being experienced by parents, especially for those who are working from home.
“I took a vacation day from work today,” she said. This is the third time she’s had to reschedule it, but since her boss’s children are also enrolled in the virtual school, they’ve been understanding about her lastminute switches.
“But there’s a lot of parents that aren’t able to do that and that’s not fair to them,” she said. “All we’re trying to do is keep our kids safe and educated … we’re just being let down completely.”