ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Parents of Orange County Public Schools students continue to grapple with technical difficulties from LaunchEd at home.


What You Need To Know

  • Some of the issues include server capacity and bandwidth

  • School district says it is trying to resolve the issues

IT expert Tom Jelneck, with On Target Web Solutions, says there are a lot of factors at play here.

While he believes the school district has done its part, he says some of those factors are still out of their hands.

That leaves parents like Erika Grabish trying to stay positive.

“Whenever we do something new, there’s a learning curve, and it’s just like anything else,” said Grabish

Grabish is the mother of a seventh grader, working through the technical problems calmly, especially when it comes to her daughter's classes that are more hands-on.

“They have a lot of the performance-based classes,” said Grabish. “Some of the teachers need to be able to see students and interact with them in a different way.”

Jelneck says this is possible with the third party platform the LaunchEd program runs through.

“They’re using a software called Canvas, which allows the classroom to kind of come alive, and be live, and be streamed into your house,” he said.

But, with more than 200,000 students in the district, many of whom are using LaunchEd around the same time, he says problems are inevitable.

“There’s a lot of things that can go wrong. There’s server capacity, and I don’t want to over-geek it. There’s bandwidth issues. There’s also the factor, there’s teachers in classrooms that may not have used this technology before,” he explained.

With a program built to be user-friendly, so far many users feel frustrated.

But Grabish is taking this in stride.

“Have a little kindness for ourselves, and a little grace with other people and make sure that we are practicing good self care,” said Grabish.

​Most of all, she says, have a little patience.

District officials stated they get where the frustration is coming from, and they are working hard to improve the experience every single day.

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