Fairfax County Schools pausing distance learning for rest of week after tech issues

FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. (FOX 5 DC) - Fairfax County Public Schools is pausing distance learning for the rest of the week after the school district experienced some technical challenges. 

Scott Brabrand, the superintendent of Fairfax County Public Schools, sent a letter to the community Wednesday explaining the issue. He said, in part: 

"FCPS had worked closely with Blackboard’s technical team for several weeks prior to the launch of distance learning and there was no indication that the system would be unable to handle the volume of participating users or would be susceptible to the security issues that many of our schools encountered."

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Brabrand says technical teams for FCPS and Blackboard "believe they have identified the root cause of the connectivity problems and that they involve a software issue." 

After systems are updated, FCPS will provide an update on Friday about their next steps. 

Blackboard said the following in a statement:

“As a Fairfax County-based company, we are deeply committed to providing Fairfax students and parents the robust and secure learning environment that they want and need. We apologize for the disruption this has caused to instruction and we appreciate patience as we all work together as an education community to ensure continuity of learning for students.”

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