Today, May 19, JCPS experienced a district-wide internet outage due to a car accident involving a utility pole on Gardiner Lane and Robards Road this morning.

“[The outage] is not an issue JCPS can fix. We need to wait for the lines to be repaired. We are optimistic internet services will be restored by morning,” JCPS Chief of Communications Carolyn Callahan said in a statement to Manual RedEye.

The internet outage began at approximately 11 a.m., immediately affecting services across JCPS leading to difficulties continuing with the school day. 

Manual staff took action quickly after receiving a message from Principal Dr. Michael Newman to start creating fail safes for this week’s finals in the event that the issue didn’t get resolved in a timely manner.

Due to KSA and AP test makeups falling this week, staff members had to make accommodations to ensure students began on time. Students taking these makeups were given the choice to either take the test on another scheduled day or use MacBooks to take them using a hotspot. Around 3 weeks ago, JCPS removed the Verizon plan from school issued chromebooks, making them incompatible with hotspots. 

Dr. Newman reported that the wifi going out did not affect the Evolv metal detectors or slow down transition time for students going to and from YPAS. Similarly, he expects it to not interrupt students’ arrival to school tomorrow.

Dr. Newman has also tried to reach out to JCPS regarding troubleshooting a backup device called a CradlePoint, a router meant to provide wireless connectivity when internet might not be available, as a fail safe for our system. Though a breakthrough hasn’t occurred yet, he urges students not to worry as he believes the situation will be patched by tomorrow morning.

“Basically it’s like a hotspot, it just doesn’t function as, ‘Oh I can find it on my phone and connect,’ I have to just plug into it like a router with Ethernet,” Dr. Newman said. “We used to have stuff like that all the time. Those hotspots were eventually kind of disbanded from the district.”

KSA and AP testing were impacted to a minimal degree. Students were still able to start on time, albeit with some difficulty.

However, students scheduled to take a makeup test later this week should not be anxious, “Like, if there’s a tornado that happens, or the Wi-Fi goes down, it’s an actual thing that we planned for. So even though this was a makeup test, there is a makeup for the makeup every time, depending on what the situation is,” Building Assessment Coordinator Harsh Upadhyay said.

Manual Staff were able to set students up with devices to keep testing running smoothly. Upadhyay reported that no students missed their testing because of the shortage. 

“We were able to use personal devices and hotspots from personal devices to connect the students to Wi-Fi at the beginning and the end of the test, which is the only time Wi-Fi is needed,” said Upadhyay.

Next year, the new JCPS phone policy will go in place in compliance with HB 208. JCPS has chosen to rule an outright ban of cell phones during the school day. It is to note that an internet outage like this may affect Manual students much more differently when students’ access to personal devices for a cellular hotspot is limited — AP and KSA tests may not be able to work so smoothly without enabling contingencies that would inconvenience test takers, though future-proofing is bound to happen as Manual and other JCPS schools take to adapting to the new cell phone ban.

At Manual, the impacts of the Wi-Fi outage were felt beyond just the testing environment. The library found it very difficult to run with the outage. Its main amenities and services are all run by Wi-Fi, including the check-in stations which were delayed because of the outage. Attendance had to be recorded manually instead of the usual Google Form sign-in.

“We bring out clipboards and pieces of paper for people to write, but it slows things down, probably annoying for students and annoying for everybody,” Library Clerk Jonathan Hawpe said. 

The main obstacle was printing, as students were unable to access files through Google Drive on school-registered devices without hotspots. According to Hawpe, the library had to devise solutions for printing needs, and ultimately were only able to print a limited number.

“It’s always when the internet goes out, you’re always suddenly aware of how much we use it for everything because it suddenly makes things tough,” Hawpe said.

Issues affected teachers as well. Classroom attendance was disrupted, having to be recorded manually similarly to the library. Teachers were also unable to access emails on laptops which led to a delay of information. Google classroom was down, leading to changes in some classes’ lesson plans and agendas.

“It’s affecting us even just like printing out the final. Because we can’t access the documents that are online in order to print finals. So tomorrow we have to come in early and hope that the Internet is working so that we can just print them and make copies,” Ms. Megan Alvey-Elliot (Math) said.

This story was originally published on Manual RedEye on May 19, 2025.