Zoom
Superintendent Iline Tracey.
As of Thursday, 87 percent of New Haven Public Schools students — 18,000 out of 20,597 — have logged onto their virtual classrooms, according to Superintendent Iline Tracey.
This is a higher rate than NHPS saw in the spring, Tracey said.
That number is also up from the first days of school, when 14,000 students logged on. The first day of school for pre-kindergarten students was Thursday.
“I think for me, 18,000 is pretty good at this stage, despite challenges with internet for students and teachers,” Tracey said.
Teachers and students have experienced glitches where they get booted out of their virtual classrooms, particularly when they have internet connection issues. Tracey said that the district has discovered that some schools do not have enough bandwidth to handle the current traffic and that her IT department is pricing out how to fix the problem.
“When the buildings were made, no one was expecting that so many would be using the technology. We were not designed like that,” Tracey said. “It’s a good thing we’re figuring out some of the kinks.”
The administration has seen a decline in the overall student population, particularly among suburban students who can go to in-person classes in their home district, Tracey said.
Emily Hays
She does not yet have a full answer for why roughly 2,500 students have not logged onto their Google Classrooms. She said that those students’ schools, as well as the district’s youth and truancy workers, are calling families to find out. So far, she is hearing about internet access and broken computers, which the district is working to fix by handing out new computers and hotspots.
While different measurements, the point-in-time number of absent students on Thursday is lower than the level of chronic absenteeism in New Haven Public Schools, which is around 20 percent.
“I must say, I commend the principals and teachers and other staff members really working hard to help these families get connected,” Tracey said.
More stats are to come. The state wants to hear about engagement as well, meaning the number of students who complete at least 50 percent of their assignments. The administration is working on crunching those numbers.