NYC Throws IBM Under School Bus For Snowy Remote Learning Glitches

NEW YORK CITY — New York City public school leaders have a message for parents and students frustrated by remote learning glitches during Tuesday's snowstorm: blame IBM, not us.

"In a word, IBM was not ready for prime time," said Chancellor David Banks.

Banks' comments throwing IBM under the proverbial school bus came after thousands of students, perhaps more, were bedeviled by login problems as they tried to start online learning shortly before 8 a.m.

The technical issues dovetailed with existing frustrations with city officials deciding to shift to remote online learning instead of call an old-fashioned "snow day" in the face of a significant nor'easter.

Many New Yorkers, including prominent elected officials, argued the glitches counted as another weather-related failure for Mayor Eric Adams.

"After troublesome responses to 2023 flood and smoke emergencies the Mayor, to his credit, has done much more to alert New Yorkers ahead of extreme weather and put plans in place to manage it," tweeted Council Member Gale Brewer. "A somewhat hollow victory today however with DOE remote learning on the fritz."

Adams and Banks, for their part, maintained the technical problems were out of their hands.

IBM — which manages logins for the city's online learning systems — surprisingly didn't prepare for nearly a million students going online by adding the required capacity ahead of time, Banks said.

Banks, however, acknowledged that IBM was not invited to a December test of online learning systems.

An IBM representative didn't return Patch's request for comment as of publication.

The problem eventually got fixed on IBM's end, and more than one million people were logged onto the school's system as of roughly noon, Banks said.

Banks apologized to parents and students, even as he pointed fingers at IBM and promised a review of what happened.

"To say that I am disappointed, frustrated and angry is an understatement," he said.

"As I said, this was a test, and I don't think we passed this test."