Parents, students struggle with technical issues when using Lee Home Connect

Learning at home away from your teacher is hard enough. Imagine doing it with major tech issues.

Distorted sound, a robotic-sounding voice, screen glitches and lots of lag time; that’s the reality for some kids in Lee Home Connect right now.

By day three, they’re over it. The district created Lee Home Connect to give students a chance to learn directly from teachers live and talk with them directly. But some parents say their kids cant hear their teachers talk.

How do you learn if every 15 minutes the person you rely on to explain math or science or reading sounds unrecognizable?

One parent sent us a real-time, real-life example of what the parent says students are dealing with when trying to learn on Lee Home Connect via Zoom. Another parent spoke with us about the impact on her daughter.

“It’s been kind of a rough week with them getting everything kind of set up,” said mom Racheal Ballard.

She told us her little girl is in ESE classes, and sitting at her computer all day struggling through the slowdowns and the shutdowns isn’t easy at her age.

“Today was a big struggle for me to just get her to sit there for 30 minutes,” Ballard said. “It’s kind of difficult.”

Just like our Zoom call, Ballard said depending on the time of day, “it does go in and out.”

Ballard is hopeful that the school district will get everything sorted out soon.

“I don’t think it will mess with her because when ours goes out, it’s just for a couple of seconds,” Ballard said.

The district is, again, asking for patience and promises students who have technical problems will not be penalized. They’ll try again tomorrow.

The best advice from the district: if your child has more issues, reach out to a school technician.