The New York City Council is zeroing in on the struggles schools and students had with remote learning in February when the city moved classes online instead of calling a snow day during a storm, while most other districts across the tri-state canceled classes altogether.
But that remote day basically turned into a de facto snow day after many students who couldn't login to their virtual classrooms gave up and opted to sled instead during the Feb. 13 storm.
On Wednesday, a panel of executives from the Department of Education apologized to students and parents for the remote day debacle and dissected what happened — and why.
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"It was shocking to be honest with you. We had been told it was going to be OK. I was surprised it was so poorly instituted," said Manhattan Councilwoman Gail Brewer during the fact-finding meeting.
The DOE brought in a team to answer their questions. Before they answered any questions, the department's deputy chief information officer started it off with a mea culpa.
"I know how frustrating it was for students and teachers that experienced delays. We are sorry we didn't prevent this issue from arising," said Scott Strickland.
Just as they said in the aftermath of the debacle, DOE educators blamed the technical issues that severely delayed the start of the school day on IBM.
"The number of users prior to 8 a.m. exceeded the capacity of the systems to handle that peak load," Strickland said.
The tech company's leadership was in the audience too — one of whom countered the argument that IBM's technology failed.
"DOE had a closet door and they needed a barn door. At over 2,000 transactions per second, everyone tried to rush through that door at once. Balancing traffic over time would have lead to a better outcome," said Vanessa Hunt of IBM.
The Education Committee chair said the meeting had three objectives: Discuss what preparations were made ahead of time, determine what specific issues led to the problems and find what solutions are available.
"A system this large needs practice and play, you can't decide one day we are going to run it and see if it works," said City Councilmember Rita Joseph "We have to get it right."
There had been a test of the system months in advance, but IBM was not involved in that test. In the short term, if there is another remote day called, the DOE will establish a staggered login policy. The DOE and IBM plan to work together to solve the problem, with a long-term goal to make a change so everyone get sign on at the same time.
