No, Online-Only Education Will NOT Be Available to EVERY Student. That’s a Lie. Here’s Why.

Let me dispel at least one lie being told across the country right now: that online-only school is an option available to every student.

It’s not.

How do I know this? Simple. I used to work in IT for a fairly large district.

While it’s true that, with the rise in importance of STEM and the increasing role of tech in today’s world, school districts have received enormous amounts of funding and grants for technology, that money is normally reserved for purchasing devices, not paying salaries.

IT departments are, as with most things in public education, severely understaffed and underfunded when it comes to personnel. They don’t have the budget to hire as many people as they need, and they don’t have enough money to pay the people they do have what they deserve.

My local district has around 32,000 students. If every student elected online-only, they’d need to get 32,000 devices purchased, unboxed, tested, configured, and distributed within the next few weeks.

No district in the country has an IT staff prepared for even half that.

But it won’t just be online-only, will it? Some students will go online and others will return to campus. The IT department now has to service every device on every campus while maintaining the entire network, as well as a whole bunch of new remote devices in people’s homes.

The typical IT department might have a staff of, let’s be really generous, and say about a dozen people who, between them, are qualified to do all the things that will need to be done. Qualified to do them, sure, but without enough hours in the day to get them done.

Parents could easily expose the sham by pulling an old fashioned “run on the banks” sort of deal wherein far too many parents choose online-only than the district is prepared for and they quickly run out of devices to distribute to students. But it goes beyond that.

We’re now asking IT departments already stretched thin with maybe a dozen people trying to support every device on dozens of campuses to support just as many devices scattered across the city in people’s homes, being used by who knows how many family members for who knows what.

It’s a logistical nightmare not a single school district’s IT department will be able to adequately handle, no matter how good they are. It’s a problem of scale and it’s not one likely to be addressed.

• What does a student do when their district-supplied laptop won’t boot? They call IT.
• What happens when the online-learning app they’re using locks up? They call IT.
• What happens when a kid hax0rs his laptop with l33t sk1llz? They call IT.
  

This is all bad enough when it’s confined to on-campus devices limited by on-campus network security, but you can’t have that same level of security remotely. (Well, you can, but not without making the support nightmare exponentially worse.)

In summary, the online-only option will only be realistically available to a small fraction of the total student population – and every school district knows this. They’re just banking on parents not taking them up on it.

Call their bluff.

If too many parents select the option, the whole thing will come crashing down. The start of school will experience any number of delays as the tech gets sorted out and poor IT staff members across the country slowly lose their minds.

So don’t actually call their bluff.

It’s not their fault. It might not even be their district’s fault. The blame lies with politicians and pundits and crywhining imbeciles on Facebook, all screaming that we absolutely must start school in the fall like normal, as if anything is at all normal right now.

Instead, call your state and local leaders and tell them you want to delay the start of school. We shouldn’t be resuming school while we’re breaking new infection rate records every day. School can wait another month. Or two. Three. However long. Education has no expiration date.

Besides, school districts will need a certain number of students to select the online-only option in order to have any hope of socially distancing students on campus in the fall. They can’t actually make classrooms bigger on the inside, you know.

Speaking of, if you think on-campus learning will be safe or consistent, get ready to be shocked and disappointed.

You can’t decrease class sizes and socially distance students with the same staff, same buildings, same equipment, same schedule, and same underfunded budget.

We’ve been ripping vital funding from education for decades while also adding millions of dollars of security to harden them against school shooters and now we think they’ll also be able to convert aging, poorly-maintained buildings into medically sterile environments overnight?

Get real. Be serious. School is meant to educate your children, not be free publicly-funded babysitting so you can go on Facebook and moan about socialism while you pretend to work your meaningless job in the private sector.

TL;DR – School districts need a certain, undisclosed number of students to go online-only to have any hope of implementing any reductions in class sizes or social distancing on-campus, but not too many or the online-only system will completely break down.

Everything is awful.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

READ MORE:

• It’s Amazing How Well Prepared Schools Aren’t
• Parents, Please Keep an Eye on Your Kid’s Virtual Classroom
• Worse Things Happen At Sea, You Know

Photo by NEC Corporation of America with Creative Commons license.

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NOTE:  I know times are hard and yeah, I need to make a living too, but if you want to read any of my books but can't afford to buy them right now, hit me up.

I'll take care of it.

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Have you ever made a decision that seemed like a good idea at the time, but you're still living with the hilarious consequences years later?

If so, then grab a snack, get comfortable, and prepare to have all of your own poor life choices seem just a little bit more bearable.

You're welcome.

Short Stories
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Life might knock us down, over and over, and will the beat the ever-loving snot out of us from the time we're old enough to give it attitude until the day we finally let it win and stop getting up.

Always get back up.

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This isn't just a book. It's a portal to other worlds where there be magic and dragons and hilarious pirates. Okay, not really. But this book is about those portals, except they're called video games.

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Part One starts way back in 1975 and meanders down various digital pathways until, oh, around about 1993 or so.

If you're feeling nostalgic for the early days of gaming or if you just want to understand why the gamer in your life loves this hobby so much, take a seat in your favorite comfy chair and crack this bad boy open.

I'll try to not be boring.

Horror
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What you are about to read is not a story. There is no beginning, middle, or end.

What follows is nothing more than a series of journal entries involving shadow people, sleep paralysis, and crippling fear. It’s not pretty, it doesn’t follow story logic, and nothing works out well in the end.

You've been warned.