Miami-Dade Schools Suffer More Technical Troubles On Day 2

MIAMI (CBSMiami) - The second-day of virtual school for Miami-Dade County Public Schools saw more technical troubles for some students and teachers.

In a tweet Tuesday morning, the school district wrote "Our internet service as intermittently interrupted early this morning. It is operational at this time. We are working with our service provider Comcast to determine the root cause."

Still, that meant tens of thousands of students were unable to log in. The MDCPS website says the district has more than 345,000 students.

"I got errors on errors on errors," said Franco Bolivar, a junior at Ronald Reagan Senior High School in Doral. "I couldn't get into my first class and then finally I got into the page and the class was just not connected."

Late Monday, Miami-Dade school leaders announced the first day glitches were fixed and hoped for a smoother day two. Superintendent Alberto Carvahlo said Monday's issues were not a capacity issue but a problem with a third-party software switch.

"Following several meetings with high-level executives from the tech company "Cisco," the district has been provided assurances that the connectivity problems experienced by students and teachers have been identified and resolved," according to a statement from the district on Monday night.

It also said a backup system is in place for Tuesday, but that second option also failed for some parents who reached out to CBS4 on Tuesday morning.

On Monday, 3rd grader Victoria Garcia-Sanchez and her mom had trouble logging on for the first day of virtual school.

"The system pretty much crashed right at the beginning and they were just kind of waiting to see how to get on and that was most of our day," said the girl's mother, Melissa Selem.

They weren't the only ones who had technical troubles on day one.

"I couldn't learn anything today, just studied," said 3rd grader Jonathan Mercedes.

"I think they should change the whole system when it comes to the logging in virutally school system," said parent, Zaidel Cardoza.

Second-grade teacher Jodi Allen said it was a day of minimal learning and maximum frustration.

"If you didn't get in early you couldn't get in the site, it couldn't be uploaded," said Allen.

The Miami-Dade County teachers union expressed their frustration in a statement on Monday.

"Our Miami-Dade education professionals have been working hard over the past two weeks, weekends included, to prepare for the start of the school year. It has been incredibly frustrating and disheartening to see how this program has failed them as well as our students and parents. Teachers have displayed an unbelievable amount of ingenuity and resilience over the past four months and our hope is that the district will be able to resolve these issues soon so that distance learning can be optimized," United Teachers of Dade President Karla Hernandez-Mats said in a statement.

On a brighter note, the superintendent said online learning could be a distant memory for some if the virus positivity rate keeps going down.

"Second to third week of September, students could be back in the classroom," said Carvallo.

For parents and students needing help logging in on Tuesday, the district has set up a help line at (305) 995-HELP (4537) of they can get help online.