MERIDIAN, Idaho — The West Ada School District Board of Trustees held a special session meeting at 6 p.m. on Thursday. The board met virtually to determine what course of action should be taken to solve the district-wide connectivity issues.
During the meeting, board members heard from a representative of the district's network provider. He explained that the firewall that provides internet to students maintains about 47,000 connections. When the virtual private network (VPN) is established by too many devices at once, that traffic can cause the connection to stall.
Attempting to reconnect to the VPN too many times can cause the system to be overloaded.
West Ada's network provider said they are prepared to implement a series of updates to student's devices they believe would solve the connection issues. They will work to correct the issues on Friday and over the weekend in preparation for student's return on Monday.
The district began updating student's devices on Thursday. As of Friday morning, nearly 9,500 devices have updated and successfully connected to the VPN.
West Ada's phased reintegration plan involves breaking students into two teams, Team One and Team Two. On Monday, Team One will return to the classroom with their devices, at which point the district's network will push updates to their devices to fix the connection issues.
By Tuesday, Team One's devices should be completely fixed and ready for remote learning. At this time, Team Two will return to the classroom for their first day of in-person learning and their devices will be updated as well.
All connection issues should be completely resolved by Monday.
The board voted unanimously to postpone any further action on this process. There was mention of possibly meeting again on the night of Tuesday, Sept. 15 to determine if the updates were successful, but it is unclear if that is set.
In addition to the reopening plan, the board also discussed whether students should have to make up the days lost due to connectivity issues. Some board members felt students should not be held responsible for a district error while others felt it was important for students to receive the education from days they missed.
The board ultimately determined there was not enough information regarding the effect missing these days would have on students and voted unanimously to postpone further action until their next scheduled board meeting on Sept. 22.
Click below to watch the full West Ada School District board meeting.
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