Police set up a crime scene after a bullet crashed through the window of Metro by T-Mobile at Morris Park Avenue and Hunt Avenue at 2 p.m. on November 7. -Photo by David Greene By David Greene Bronx Voice November 21, 2024 Follow @Bronxvoice1 BRONX - Police are currently looking for an assailant who fired a gunshot at another unknown individual along busy Morris Park Avenue. The bullet smashed through the front door of a phone store, thankfully no one was injured. Police officials say the incident was reported at 2 p.m. on November 7, outside of the Green Olive Deli, located at 716 Morris Park Avenue, at the corner of Hunt Avenue. Officials say the unknown gunman fired a single shot at a second individual and missed. The bullet flew across the street and through the front door of Metro by T-Mobile, at 723 Morris Park Avenue. Both the gunman and victim fled the scene on foot. No description of the gunman was
Major technical problems threatened to upend NYC's promise to offer virtual learning during a snowstorm on Tuesday. (Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images)
This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters
Technical meltdown prevents NYC students from logging onto virtual classes during remote snow day
Teachers and students across New York City were shut out of their virtual classes Tuesday morning, a major glitch as city officials ordered schools to offer remote instruction because of the snowstorm.
The city’s Education Department confirmed in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that families and educators were struggling to log into their remote learning platforms.
Just before 9:30 a.m., the Education Department said IBM was rolling out a fix, though it was not immediately clear when families could expect remote classrooms to be fully up and running.
The outage seemed to prevent many — though not all — teachers and students from logging into Zoom for remote classes. Some school leaders said they were also unable to log into their official email accounts or the city’s platform for tracking attendance.
Adam Schwartz, a teacher at Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School in Brooklyn, said he could not log in to teach his classes this morning. And his daughter, a second grader at Brooklyn’s P.S. 130, also could not participate in remote lessons on Zoom, though both were able to log in again around 9 a.m.
“The Department of Education would have liked to run just as they did in 2021 during the height of remote instruction,” he wrote in a text message. “But this is 2024. We are all out of practice, even the technical people.”
Tuesday represented the first time the entire system was expected to go virtual during a snowstorm — a major test of the city’s strategy to switch to remote learning instead of canceling classes on account of the inclement weather. The technical problems threatened to derail the city’s plans to offer live virtual lessons throughout the day.
One Manhattan elementary school principal said the outages prevented the school from offering remote instruction this morning.
“No classes are happening. It can’t happen because nobody can log into anything,” said the principal, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The bigger impact is both the intangible piece: the trust, the perception of competence, which was a major issue during COVID.”
Rita Joesph, a former teacher and chair of City Council’s education committee, blasted the Education Department for “a lack of preparedness.”
The Education Department no longer cancels classes during snowstorms in part because officials have added holidays to the school calendar and must still meet a state requirement to offer 180 days of school each year. State education officials did not immediately say if the city will get credit for holding classes if a significant number of students are unable to participate.
On Monday, schools Chancellor David Banks suggested that some glitches were likely, though he indicated teachers would still be expected to deliver remote lessons that mirror the school day.
“Whenever you’re dealing with technology and a system this large, there are always glitches,” Banks said. But he emphasized that the Education Department was ready to pivot to remote learning.
“It’s one of the good things that in fact emerged from the pandemic was our preparedness to be ready for moments like this,” he said, noting that schools were asked to practice the pivot to virtual learning in advance of the winter recess. “And I think the school system is more than prepared.”
Miriam Sicherman, a third grade teacher at Manhattan’s Children’s Workshop School, said that students with new, Education Department-issued iPads were unable to use them and kept getting error messages. Google Classroom was inconsistently working all morning. Her school hosted a live morning meeting, which was “hilarious” with all of the tech issues, she said. Sicherman let her families know that she would be available all day through her school’s messaging app, Bloomz.
She posted links to various educational sites — English and Spanish ones — but said no assignments needed to be turned in. Her main recommendation to her students: Go play in the snow.
“My students were in pre-K and K during the pandemic and barely know how to use Google Classroom, and I see no point in trying to teach them remotely today,” she wrote in an email. “They are young enough to barely remember the last time NYC had any significant snowfall and they need to go outside and play.”
Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.
Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
Comments
Post a Comment