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"Absolutely Inundated": Teachers Say Demands Of Remote Learning Are Overwhelming NYC DOE Tech Support
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David Cruz
Published Sep 23, 2020
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Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office
By
David Cruz
Published Sep 23, 2020
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With remote learning underway for the country's largest public school system, some NYC teachers are frustrated by what they say is a lack of adequate tech support to quickly address problems that have plagued some schools since they were initially shut down in March due to COVID-19.
The DOE does have a help desk available for teachers facing technical problems with devices or Internet connections, but they're discouraged from calling it until they've used the DOE's website to describe the problem and generate a ticket to track the status of the complaint.
Teachers we spoke to say submitting a request for help is easy, but actually getting the problem fixed takes far took long. In some cases, it can take weeks to have a repair request fulfilled, leaving students in the lurch, teachers to resolve the problem themselves or call the help desk -- something they're not encouraged to do.
"I don't call them any more because you'll be on hold for, like, two hours," an assistant principal at a school in Sunset Park told Gothamist. "In fact the [Chief Information Officer] for the DOE said...'don't call them. Submit a ticket.'"
That warning was shared in an email blast sent by Anuraag Sharma, the CIO under the DOE's Division of Instructional and Information Technology, reminding them that calling the help desk "does not guarantee that you will receive faster service."
"Please encourage all your staff or colleagues, as well as students and families, to submit a ticket online before calling the Help Desk," Sharma wrote in the email shared with Gothamist.
The DOE -- which has distributed 320,000 internet-enabled Apple iPads as a way of meeting the demand for remote learning -- says it can take Apple one to two weeks to make repairs on broken devices. The DOE would not provide the current number of unresolved tickets.
“Since March, our top priority has been bridging the technology gap and getting hundreds of thousands of internet-enabled devices into the hands of students who need them," the DOE said in a statement. "We have been quickly responding to requests from schools, distributing devices and are currently shipping thousands more from our central inventory to meet the recent demand. We’ll continue working with every school in supporting their students and addressing their device needs.”
The assistant principal in Sunset Park, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of being ostracized by the DOE, has been resigned into relying on a Facebook group called NYC Schools Tech to resolve some of her pressing issues. In some cases, tickets she's put in for have taken months to fix.
At P.S. 261 in Brooklyn, a teacher who asked that her name not be used because she was not authorized to speak to reporters, also experienced the same long waiting times, particularly in the spring. Her experience with the help desk convinced her it wasn't exactly the best use of her time, and she's since given up on the help desk.
"You can wait on phone for hour just to create a ticket," said the teacher, who was attempting to get access to an Apple iPad's settings so she can access the App Store. "No one answering the phone has any knowledge and they can’t troubleshoot."
Some schools have circumvented the help desk by hiring their own in-house IT expert. But as another teacher, who too asked to remain anonymous out of fear from the DOE, told Gothamist, the expert is "absolutely inundated with requests for help." Some issues include getting devices prepared for live steaming, and unreliable Wi-Fi issues.
"There are tens or hundreds of devices coming back to the school right now 'broken'-- both our own laptops and the DOE iPads," the teacher wrote in an email. "Some need relatively simple updates-- the 'turn it off and back on' strategy for rebooting iPads-- while others need to be fully reimaged, a process that requires a dedicated external hard drive and several hours of wait time. For one man to handle all of these requests, on limited time, with no budget, and all by himself, is simply too much. And again, we're fortunate that we even have one person to help! In other buildings, responding to malfunctioning technology falls to the teachers or office staff, and other parents are being told to call 311 or put in a tech support request through the DOE website."
Anna Meyer, a teacher at Bronx Latin High School in Morrisania who is working remotely this year, has two students unable to log in since the beginning of the school year because the DOE-issued iPads weren't working. She directed them to the help desk and are now waiting to hear back. The two students, meanwhile, have no other way of reporting to school for remote learning.
"I sent an email to my team this morning just asking if we have worksheets we can print out just so we can mail this kid something so that--it's not gonna be perfect, but it's like something to do in the meantime," said Meyer. "And I think we're lucky to be at a small school where the people really are proactive and following up, but I'd imagine in larger settings, like kids also just get lost and drop off."
The delays in getting these devices fixed once again exposes the equity issue that has long plagued the NYC school system, according to Meyer.
"The failure to provide working devices and the failure to repair them in a timely manner is disproportionately affecting the city's most vulnerable students," said Meyer. "It is not, as [Schools] Chancellor [Richard Carranza] says, 'ensuring that all our students continue to learn and thrive.'"
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David Cruz
David is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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