Maryland parents face frustrations as students return to virtual classes

Maryland parents express frustrations over virtual start to school year

Tens of thousands of kids in the D.C. region went back to school Monday – but from the inside of their own homes.

GAITHERSBURG, Md. - Tens of thousands of kids in the D.C. region went back to school Monday – but from the inside of their own homes.

Some parents who spoke with FOX 5 said they ran into a few hiccups in the beginning, while others said they couldn’t log in at all which forced some students to miss a majority of their first day of online learning.

Most parents expected that it wouldn’t be a perfect start to online learning – but nevertheless, found it frustrating.

Some Maryland parents frustrated with online start to school year

Tens of thousands of kids in the D.C. region went back to school today – but from inside their own homes. Some parents in Maryland said the start was not without its problems.

The Blair family in Gaithersburg were among those trying to make the start as perfect as possible – even going so far as to turn their dining room, into a makeshift classroom.

But they said that the process of getting started with virtual learning wasn’t an easy one.

Cindy Cason whose daughter, Addison stayed with the Blairs for the first day, didn’t meet her first-grade teacher until 2 p.m. on her first day of virtual school.

“I didn’t have a zoom log in,” Cason explained, “I had to keep emailing for the zoom login and then once I did receive it I also didn’t have a password to log her into it.”

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That issue in turn caused Addison to miss a good portion of online learning for the day.

Addison is going to virtual school along with her twin cousins and kindergarteners, Kamilah and Kingston Blair, who are also enrolled within the Montogmery County Public School system.

Their mother, Erika Blair said she was able to log into Zoom on Monday morning —but for only one of the twins.

“It started like timing out, we got a ‘504 time out error’ and I had to reboot,” Blair said.

Blair said, the whole incident lasted for about 45 minutes. She also said that other parents in the online classroom were having the same issues.

“They have four different links for zoom that they have to log into,” Blair said, “so for the second class, the teacher was having problems connecting like her Zoom and was having network issues and the video was timing out.”

MCPS confirmed our inquiry into the claims by telling us the following:

“The district encountered some unplanned slowness this morning with one of its cloud-service providers. Some families may have experienced some temporary slowness. This has since been resolved. The district will continue to monitor the situation and respond to any issues appropriately.”

But MCPS wasn’t alone.

Shortly after 9 a.m., the Charles County Public School system acknowledged that the student learning system, known as StudentVUE, was experiencing heavy traffic, causing access issues.

The district indicated around 10:30 a.m. that the system was back up and running.

In a statement, the board of education for CCPS said:

“The system provider, Edupoint, worked with us throughout the morning to provide us with additional resources. CCPS worked with Edupoint in advance to prepare for online learning and the volume of traffic expected on the first day of school. CCPS will excuse any student absences caused by today's log in issues. We appreciate your patience as our staff worked to manage this situation today and provide live instruction for students. We do not anticipate any more issues. Edupoint has committed to monitor and provide whatever support is necessary to keep our students and teachers online teaching and learning. We apologize for the inconvenience caused this morning.”

A representative with Prince George’s County Public Schools said that the school system experienced an isolated issue with their network, but it was resolved.

Both MCPS and PGCPS stated that students will not be penalized for tardiness or for missing school due to Monday’s log in issues.

“I do wish that they (MCPS) had done a trial run through,” said Cason, “and maybe they did but I just don’t know because the communication hasn’t been provided. I’m not trying to bad mouth here but I’m just wondering what was the process to get everything ready.”