Updated: Arlington School Official Apologizes For Rough Start

Updated (Sept. 8, 3:30 p.m): This story was updated with information from Superintendent Dr. Francisco Durán's letter to APS families.

ARLING TON, VA — After many Arlington County Public Schools students were unable to sign on Tuesday morning to the school system's virtual private network, Superintendent Dr. Francisco Durán sent out a letter of apology to APS families.

"We sincerely apologize for the system-wide technical challenges many families experienced today, especially with connecting APS devices to Canvas and Microsoft Teams," Durán said, in the letter. "The Department of Information Services identified that the primary source of the issue was firewall-related, due to the large volume of traffic trying to access Microsoft Teams at one time. We are deploying a solution now."

Families do not need to take any additional steps, according to Durán. APS is encouraging families to restart their child's device to establish a connection.

"Families can continue to access our self-help guides on the website and dial 703-228-2570 for additional support," he said. "We are sorry for the issues and understand your frustration as we start the year."

Tuesday was supposed to be the first day of the new school year in Arlington, with students taking classes virtually from home. Unfortunately, many students were not able to sign on to Global Protect, the school system's VPN.

"We knew there would be a high volume of traffic on the first day of school," Durán said, in his letter. "We believed we had taken all necessary steps to prepare for this in advance, and unfortunately this morning we discovered an additional adjustment was needed. We are refreshing the firewall servers now. Performance has already improved and should continue to improve through the afternoon. We will continue to monitor this tomorrow and throughout this first week to make adjustments when necessary."

APS learned there was a problem with Global Protect last week, but the issue was resolved over the weekend, according to Durán.

"We will continue to monitor and support families throughout this week and on an ongoing basis," he said.

Arlington resident Mark Hampton told Patch his daughter couldn't sign in to the VPN on her school-provided computer at 8:20 a.m. When the Yorktown junior attempted to sign on, it told her there was no internet connection.

"We tried different things," Hampton said. "We tried rebooting."

As a tech guy, he hunted around online and found a link on the APS website with instructions on how to reset GlobalConnect.

"We did that and connected for a little while, but it dropped the connection again," Hampton said. "It's been doing that all morning long. So, it's been a struggle the first day of school. ... Everyone's uncertain about what this first day was going to be like and then you add this to it. We were just frantic, trying to figure out, 'Well, don't want to look bad the first day of school.'"

Eventually, Hampton's daughter was able to use her iPad to sign in to a chatroom after her teacher sent out new links for Teams Tuesday morning.

"If you have the link to the new chat rooms, the personal device will work," Hampton said. "But, if you try to use the school device, it just has problems."

APS sent out the following alert Tuesday morning to students:

We are aware that students are having challenges logging into their classes. We are working to address the issues quickly and appreciate your patience. We apologize for the difficulty families have experienced this morning. Please call 571-749-2570 if you are experiencing connectivity issues.

Back in July, Durán called for APS to push back the start of the academic school year from its Aug. 24 scheduled start date to Sept. 8, due to the coronavirus pandemic. He also recommended students begin the year virtually. The school board approved both his recommendations.

Hampton admitted to having mixed feelings about his daughter attending school virtually, even before Tuesday morning's technical snafu.

"I want to do the safe thing, but I also want her to learn," he said. "So, I thing for the short term, maybe this is the right answer, but I do hope they go back to school at some point in the not so distant future."

APS is aware that students are currently experiencing system & connectivity issues. We are working to resolve these issues as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience & we will provide updates as they become available.
— Arlington Public Schools (@APSVirginia) September 8, 2020