QUESTION
When was the decision to eliminate snow days announced, and how is the Department of Education preparing for remote learning challenges?
0:53:39
·
4 min
The conversation reveals previous shortcomings in remote learning logistics on snow days and discusses ongoing efforts for improvement.
- Council Member Eric Dinowitz questions the announcement date for no more snow days and criticizes the preparedness for high-volume remote logins.
- Deputy Chancellor Emma Vadehra and Deputy CIO Scott Strickland acknowledge past issues but highlight efforts to prevent them, including load testing with IBM.
- Vadehra states the Department of Education's commitment to better prepare for similar situations in the future, mentioning specific technical challenges.
- The discussion also involves the system's previous underestimation of simultaneous user logins and mentions the need for staggered access to mitigate such issues.
Eric Dinowitz
0:53:39
When did you announce that snow days, there would be no more snow days.
0:53:42
When was that announced?
Emma Vadehra
0:53:47
I don't know the date on which it was announced.
0:53:49
I believe it was referenced that it was first announced in the previous administration, but I don't know when it was re announced.
Eric Dinowitz
0:53:54
So it's been a it's whatever it's 2021.
0:53:59
So it's been a few years.
0:54:01
So between 2021, in 2024, there was no one in the Department of Education, in the technology department, no one in the entire city who kind of said, you know what?
0:54:14
We're gonna have almost a million users logging in at the same time.
0:54:18
Perhaps the the product we have since 2018 may not be appropriate for everyone logging in at the same time.
0:54:27
There was there's no one who at the dealer who asks those sorts of questions.
Scott Strickland
0:54:37
Again, we were procuring a service from IBM that was we were paying for the service to support 300,000,000 users.
0:54:44
I'm not sure that either IBM or we knew exactly how it would perform if we had 2, 3, 400,000 users logging in, trying to log in, in a very condensed period of time.
Eric Dinowitz
0:54:59
I I I would just I I don't even know know how to respond to that.
0:55:04
I mean, that the point is shouldn't there be someone who says, you know, it's a snow day, and all schools in New York City start at around the same time.
0:55:15
Think they're all gonna log in at the same time.
0:55:18
Shouldn't we be preparing for that possibility?
0:55:21
But there's no one at the DOE who who asks those sorts of questions.
0:55:29
It could it could be a parent.
0:55:32
Who knows that all schools started roughly the same time?
0:55:35
That that person doesn't exist at New York City Public Schools?
Emma Vadehra
0:55:40
I think I'd say a few things.
0:55:41
I think first of all, I would say, and I hope you heard that while we are deeply regretful about what happened and are committed to working with IBM to make sure it does not and again, we did undertake a series of work over the past few months to be as prepared as we could in as many ways as we could.
0:55:58
We did notify our vendors that we were pivoting to remote.
0:56:01
We and they have an understanding of what our system load is.
0:56:04
We appreciate now.
0:56:06
That in terms of this one precise issue, we collectively need to work on what the correct transactions per second are.
0:56:13
For enough of our students to be able to log in at the same time.
0:56:16
And then in fact, now that we are working together, it looks like for the time being at least that needs to be staggered to ensure the systems can handle it.
0:56:24
So that's what we are trying to do going forward.
0:56:27
We are here and we've said that we are trying to do this better for the next time, and that's what we're doing.
0:56:34
The one other thing I would flag and IBM can speak to this more and not trying to kick it to them is IBM has been providing us with more than 400 TPS for in the past as well.
0:56:45
So since the beginning of the year, we were actually above that allocation as well as last year.
0:56:50
So we weren't actually functioning in the particular technical environment that there was, that's something regardless we need to work on going forward together.
0:57:00
Right?
0:57:00
And that's true.
0:57:01
We weren't at 400.
0:57:02
We were at 1400.
0:57:03
In September.
Eric Dinowitz
0:57:04
We don't know what sorts of problems will exist in the future.
0:57:08
That's why we are counting on you to anticipate those problems and prepare for it.
0:57:14
Again, based on your testimony that appears that you've prepared the students and families for it.
0:57:19
But we are counting on our city agencies, on our Department of Education, our public schools to prepare on the back end for the things that are unforeseen that we don't always know is gonna happen.
0:57:30
That's your job, and that's what we are counting on you to do.
0:57:33
Thank you, chair.
Emma Vadehra
0:57:36
Appreciate that.
0:57:37
That's what we're here for.
0:57:38
And I would say we can speak about this more in terms of the load testing we are doing now ourselves in our current environment.
0:57:44
The load testing we are doing with IBM in our environment with them going forward to ensure that's exactly how prepared we are going forward.
0:57:51
Thank
Tanesha Grant
0:57:51
you.
0:57:52
Sorry.
Rita C. Joseph
0:57:52
Well, thank you for that.