Parents struggle with school-issued iPads on first day of school
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Parents lined up outside of Columbia middle schools Tuesday morning to get help fixing their school-issued iPads on the first day of online school.
Parents have experienced a variety of problems including connectivity issues, passwords not granting access, the inability to connect to Zoom or Schoology, the district's online learning platform, and more.
Greg Caine, the Principle of Jefferson Middle School, said some of the problems came from a company contracted by the school district.
The district said the vendor it uses for filtering connectivity made some modifications that caused additional issues with connecting to the internet.
"They pushed out some things and that caused some issues, we had regular updates and when students were updating their iPads they weren't loading correctly," Caine said.
Caine said the goal is to get students comfortable using the technology and back into a school routine.
"There is going to be a great deal of flexibility and leniency while we figure out those things for the kids this week," he said.
CPS parent, Amanda French, waited for over an hour to move up three spots in line at West Middle School Tuesday morning while trying to get her daughter's school-issued iPad fixed.
"We did the reset last night and everything seemed to be working fine but she's not able to link to any of her zoom classes at all," she said.
The school district sent out an email Monday night regarding the technical issues for parents trying to reset the iPads.
In order to help resolve the issues, technicians will be at all middle schools from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and the Aslin Administration Building from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
