A 13-hour marathon discussion by the Miami-Day County School board, resulted in cutting ties with K12, the company running the My School Online Platform.
Shut down of My School Online Platform
Unanimous voting after 13-hours of discussion led the Miami-Dade County School Board to cut its ties with the company K12. K12 is in charge of managing the My School Online Platform, an online platform used for online learning in all Miami-Dade county schools. This is after numerous complaints of technical issues by both students and teachers, and the most recent cyberattack that bogged down the platform’s system. The company has taken the blame for the misfortunate outcome of the start of online classes in Miami-Dade County.
A proposal was submitted by vice-chair Steve Gallon to allow teachers and students up to Friday to migrate their files from the My School Online Platform to the temporary alternative online platform, Microsoft Teams. However, an order from the district board came out early Thursday morning, a few hours after the board meeting, that cutting ties with company K12 will be effective immediately.
The sudden mandate from the board left teachers in the dark as they have yet to migrate their lesson plans saved up in the My School Online platform database. Even though the familiarity teachers had with the alternative online platform, Microsoft Teams, the lesson plans that they have prepared in advance were locked out inside the K12 company platform.
In a statement from the district spokeswoman Jackie Calzadilla, “the decision to cut ties with K12 effective immediately was to protect teachers and students from confusion if they do not transition immediately.”
In the meantime, teachers will make use of Microsoft Teams and Zoom to deliver online classes to the students of Miami-Dade County. Teachers were already acquainted with the platform as it was initially used during the start of the shut down of physical classes in Miami-Dade County due to COVID-19.
