MSJ’s Week of Technological Issues

An unplanned outage struck MSJ as well as the surrounding areas, at 11:44 a.m. on Tuesday, September 16. With technology-related issues surfacing in the district throughout the week, the two-hour long power outage served to emphasize issues with the school’s dependence on technology for lesson plans and general conduct. With the school having had to postpone lessons, and clubs having postponed meetings, the general environment of the school throughout the day felt sluggish and many students voiced complaints of unproductivity. 

The outage occurred at the end of third period, cutting off the lights and access to electricity and internet. As the clock and bell system are electronic, bells did not ring before and after lunch, leading to delays in fifth period as students didn’t know when lunch ended.

Students and teachers alike were frustrated by multiple days of power outages. Many clubs and student-led activities were forced to reschedule, such as MSJ Spanish Honors Society. “We didn’t want our first meeting to be bootstrapped and rushed without access to our online materials. As a result of postponing the meeting, I’ve had to move around other commitments,” says Spanish Honors Society President Roland Lee.

Power returned at 1:17 p.m., approximately six hours before PG&E’s estimated time of 7:30 p.m. The Internet returned later, towards the end of the school day, though many classes and student activities had already been disrupted.

This was not the first major school-wide technological issue of the week.  The outage followed an Internet outage just a day prior, causing teachers to shift lesson plans multiple days back. Classes like Digital Imaging, which depended entirely on Internet access, were not able to hold a lesson at all. On Monday, the internet went down district-wide, with the WiFi being down for the better half of the school day. With no internet connections, many lessons were postponed or rendered useless, or altered to shift offline. Additionally, other technology issues arose on Thursday, September 18, with Chromebooks malfunctioning on a district-wide scale. Students were unable to log into Chromebooks and could not access necessary tools like Google Classroom during the school day.

With all of these technological mishaps, the week has been chaotic, though school offices have been attempting to return order repeatedly by contacting sources like PG&E and the district office. Fortunately, teachers were able to handle and adapt to situations well, still performing their lessons on the most part from personal knowledge or physical resources, despite the obstacles.