MIAMI MOANS: LIFE IN THE WAR ZONE - SCHOOL BLUES

The first days of a new school year are always fraught with issues, most of them endemic to the situation no matter where you go. I remember the typical worries, would I like my classes, my teachers, and whoever sat next to me. I'm lucky that I never faced truly bad issues during my school days.

Not so now. Lately, school systems in the USA have been caught in a morass of bad experiences. New York pushed off the start of in-person lessons, and some teachers in Boston refused to go into the buildings. Colleges are shutting down because students party too hearty and are spreading Covid 19 faster than soft peanut butter on a slice of bread.

But Miami Dade County got a truly raw deal today — hackers got into the system and caused untold havoc for reportedly 10,000 teachers and 160,000 students.  

When students and teachers tried to use the My School On Line learning platform, they had serious connectivity issues. Comcast is the provider for the school system, and so far the company is working on the matter. Everyone is clueless as to who is behind it. The FBI, Secret Service and Florida's Department of Law Enforcement are looking into the fiasco.

Alberto Carvalho, Miami Dade County Superintendent of Schools, called the mess a "malicious, complex, well orchestrated attempt" at derailing the schools.

As the school years officially begin, it's increasingly apparent that both students and teachers have some real worries in addition to the prospect of getting Covid 19 from either students or fellow teachers. 

I have many friends in several countries who are teachers and frankly I'm worried about all of them. Their work is hard enough (I've heard some whopping tales over the years) without all of this to boot. 

Miami and other cities already have enough on their plate: businesses closing, joblessness and a host of residents out of their wits with concern about when the next shoe will drop. Let's not even talk about what could happen if companies which sent their employees to work at home might not come back to those shiny downtown headquarters. That is a subject for another day and an issue nationwide.

Kids are showing up at school virtually and are stymied in their attempt to simply attend class as best they can. I know how crazy I get when my bandwidth isn't there or my provider (yes, Comcast) has an outage. It happened recently for only one day and that was enough for me.

But this, this is hard enough and can't go on. Let's hope officials and techs can sort out the situation. And hopefully authorities can find the nimrod(s) who thought it would be funny to muck about with  an educational system which is already suffering enough.

Wear the masks, people, wear the masks.