IBM pushed back against the Adams administration’s blame for technical failures during last month’s remote snow day, testifying that the city purchased systems without enough capacity for the nation’s largest school district.
After students and teachers were shut out of virtual classrooms the morning of Feb. 13, Mayor Adams and Schools Chancellor David Banks insisted the tech behemoth should have been prepared after the city warned them the day before.
“Knowing that we’ve done everything we can to make sure that this technology was working above and beyond what it was contracted to do, hearing it be summarized as an IBM technology problem was, of course, frustrating,” Vanessa Hunt, senior state executive for New York at IBM said at an oversight hearing Wednesday at City Hall.
As the city hunkered down for expected significant snowfall, public schools announced the day before that classes would shift online — the first systemwide test of remote learning since the pandemic. Despite the advance notice, the public schools’ user log-in authenticator, which it contracts through IBM, buckled when hundreds of thousands of users tried to log on at once.
The chancellor, summing up the fiasco, explained IBM was “not ready for prime time.” While the majority of students eventually got online, many families gave up and ventured outside to enjoy the snow but missed a day of learning.
Hunt explained that the city and IBM are working off a contract that predates the pandemic’s expansion of remote learning. She said IBM has repeatedly increased the capacity of the system, “far beyond” the contracted levels, at no added cost. On the snow day, the platform was handling capacity more than five times what the city is paying for.
“On Feb. 13, the Department of Education had a closet door when it needed a barn door,” Hunt said. “Everyone tried to rush through that door at once.”
Going into the remote day, education officials promised they were prepared. At a press conference and closed-door meeting with elected officials, Banks and his deputies touted “simulations” that schools participated in before the winter break to test run a pivot to online.
But the city’s public schools did not conduct a load test ahead of time, education officials confirmed Wednesday. Remote learning practices took place over two weeks from November to December, with the exact date determined by dozens of superintendents. They would not commit to stress-testing the system going forward.
“It is a heavy lift and a big ask to ask all of our families and teachers to take that on, so we’re thinking we’re thinking that through,” said public schools’ Chief Operating Officer Emma Vadehera, who described a stress-test as not “industry standard.”
Education officials are considering changes to the contract, including a provision that would automatically adjust system capacity to its scale of users. In the meantime, the city could stagger start times on remote days to avoid repeating last month’s technical failures. Students would take turns logging on by grade level, which could take over an hour to get everyone online, according to early estimates.
“I know how frustrating it was for many students and families who experienced delays when logging in for class,” said Scott Strickland, who until last week was the public schools’ acting Chief Information Officer. “We’re sorry we did not prevent this issue from arising.”
