Well folks we appear to have avoided Zoomageddon, which struck many San Diego Unified households this morning, when many, many kids weren’t able to log on to the teachers’ Zoom meeting. Good thing it was only a meet and greet.
Best I can tell, it’s because we were using our own devices rather than the district-provided Chromebooks. I’m hoping to find out more tonight when my kid’s elementary school principal will hold a meeting with all of us parents.
But if I’m right, it’s yet another example of the digital divide that persists in schools in California --and around the nation.
About 60 percent of kids in San Diego Unified qualify for free and reduced lunches. That means they come from households that make about $47,600 a year for a family of four. My 10 yo’s school has so many of these kids that everyone gets free lunches. I think I’m pretty safe assuming that these families rely on district-provided devices.
So: our family, which right now has three laptops and a desktop, had a fine first day of school. I have a couple of colleagues who only have a home computer, provided by their work, and their kids’ district-provided Chromebook. Their morning wasn’t smooth. Basically, they were unable to work for an hour because their kid took over their computers. But hey, at least they had that option.
It's unclear how many hundreds, or thousands, of families did not.
One last, funny note: My 14 yo’s government teacher was Zooming from his balcony and referring to himself in the third person. Hm.
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