The school district has had Wi-Fi connectivity issues this year. While technology employees have not discovered a permanent fix, they have worked to put temporary solutions in place.

“We have implemented enhancements that have improved the performance (of connectivity),”  Chief Technology Officer Fernando De Velasco said. “We will continue to monitor, and, depending on developments, we will continue to further troubleshoot the issue.”

While connections in some classrooms have been slow, students still have been able to continue their daily work, including communication via emails and finding ways to communicate. Yet, at times, insufficient Wi-Fi connections have landed emails that writers thought they had sent in their drafts folder.

“Dr. (Holly) Ferguson wants us to communicate as clearly and as efficiently as possible,” principal John Burdett said. “So, the sooner I can get back to people who’ve emailed, and I’ve emailed back, that’s what I want to do, so it’s interrupted that a little bit. It’s delayed the response.”

The Wi-Fi outages typically have last only seconds to minutes.

“Fortunately, the internet reconnects quickly, and I’m able to respond later,” Burdett said. “When I send something, it ends up being in a draft, so I go to my drafts folder, and I send it out. But, it’s not ideal, because when I finish something I want to move on to the next thing.”

Administrators and other school faculty members said they have kept a “cool head” when the internet issues rise up, but some students say they are annoyed with the constant issues, especially when they pop up during classes where the majority of their work is online.

“It’s very annoying,” freshman Jade Hotard said. “I don’t like it because there’s already classrooms with really bad Wi-Fi, like my English teacher Mrs. Mesa’s. There’s just no connection in there, but it’s very annoying just in general, even if I’d be in a place that normally has really good internet, because then we can’t get our work done.”

When the internet does go out for any length of time, teachers and staff members still find ways to carry on with their lessons or daily agendas.

“There are multiple things that I try to do every day. Part of that involves technology. A lot of that has nothing to do with technology,” Burdett said. “It’s human interaction, so the lack of technology has no impact on that.”

Burdett said communication can often be handled in person, too.

“So, me connecting with people, going and speaking with teachers and students or other staff members, I don’t need technology for that, and you shouldn’t,” Burdett said. “If you’re trying to make connections, go meet with the people.”

Despite some getting upset over the Wi-Fi not always working as fast as they would like, Burdett said he has not seen any major issues with that reality.

“Everybody understands,” Burdett said. “This is a bug-in-the-system issue. If we didn’t have that, then with all of the construction going on at least once a year – some company cuts a wire somewhere in our district, which shuts us down – so, even though it’s not common, it does happen. So, we can pivot and just move on, and just make adjustments.”

Some students and staff said they have noticed that personal devices tend to be more greatly affected when the internet goes out, as opposed to the devices that the school owns and lends out to students.

“It depends, like specifically in my Game Design class, I have to use my personal laptop whenever I have to get a reference picture,” Hotard said. “It’s annoying, just in general, because you have to wait to try and find something. Just, in general, it affects everything.”