"I'd be very surprised if somewhere on the order of 1,000 to
1,500 schools did not have to shut down in order to fix
Y2K-related failures." Education Deputy Secretary Mike Smith

Y2K Closing 1,000 Schools

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), October 28, 1999

Answers

Previous thread already started.

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), October 28, 1999.

So why would they have to do that? Non-compliant books? Non- compliant three ring binders?

What a bunch of crap.

-- (that@is. all BS), October 28, 1999.

Gotta love the typical polly answer above. It's so difficult for them to accept the truth even when it is given to them by one of their own beloved government suits.

-- Pierre Bear (the@old.one), October 28, 1999.

So...what do you suppose is going to happen to all of those kids who won't have state sponsored day care anymore? Who's gonna watch 'em when so many families have both parents working outside of the home?

Can you start to see how everything is all tied together?

-- Pierre Bear (the@old.com), October 28, 1999.

What THE HELL are you talking about?

You name three reasons why a school can't function because of Y2K and I'll shaddup.

I'm not talking hypothetical BS here. Don't tell me the POWER will go out and everyone will be frozen. Up until now everything you doomers rely on is all IF IF IF IF.

Tell me why 1000 schools will close without using the word IF, okay dokey? PROVE why these 1000 shools will not be open... and give me something other than "because it's the weekend dummy!".

-- (if@if.if), October 28, 1999.

If you had bothered to read the *&^&^%& link, you would have seen this paragraph......

So while district-based payroll and computer systems will likely be up and running as of Jan. 1, many school-based heating, security and telecommunications systems could go down, Smith said.

-- Bob (bob@bob.bob), October 28, 1999.

Home schooling should be part of everyone's
preps. If both parents work they will need to
make some decisions. One can take an emergency
leave. Hire a sitter. Leave the kid on her/his
own to fend for her/himself. :-'

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), October 28, 1999.

snip

" The nation's top Y2K watchdog agreed with Smith's assessment. "A lot of school systems are cutting it very close, a lot of them aren't going to make it and some of them are going to be in difficulty," said John Koskinen, chair of the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion."

Why not ask Kosky- he has ALL the answers.

-- Mike Lang (webflier@erols.com), October 28, 1999.

If:

Since you apparently are too lazy to click on the link above, I'll paste a quote from Mr. Smith, the Secretary of Education:

So while district-based payroll and computer systems will likely be up and running as of Jan. 1, many school-based heating, security and telecommunications systems could go down, Smith said.

(Crappy formatting - sorry)

There's your 3 things - heating, security and telecommunication. And, Kosky himself said this morning that we should expect 1 closing per district. There are 15,000 school districts in the U.S.

You do the math.

The sooner you get over your denial, the better off you'll be.

-- Pierre Bear (the@old.one), October 28, 1999.

Geeeee.... what happened to If? Got kinda quiet, didn't he?

Just in case you're still lurking, If, let me explain why those three systems are important to the functioning of a school:

1. Heating. Should be more than obvious, but in case it isn't, try to imagine trying to teach kids that can't hear over their chattering teeth. Oh, and kerosine & electric plug-in heaters are a bit too dangerous.

2. Security. Also should be obvious. In elementary schools it protects the kids from outside dangers. Among older kids, protects them from each other. If you can't picture some of our teenagers taking advantage of a sudden lack of security, you haven't been watching the news for the past few years.

3. Telecommunications. Oh, I know, I'm sure you think a school can operate just fine without all the handy internet hook ups, and the administraters might just have to write a letter instead of a making a phone call. But if you think that anyone who has a child in school is willing to leave them in a location that has no way of calling out for emergency services, or even to contact them about their child, you either are not a parent, or shouldn't be a parent.

Do you get it now, If?

-- Arewyn (isitth@latealready.com), October 28, 1999.

I am technology coordinator at a K12 school in Nebraska. None of the reasons given will keep us from being open. Heat? Our rooms are too cold now, half the kids never take their parkas off all day, but we have checked, we can turn our furnace on by hand. Security? There are doors that can be opened by keys. (Our outer doors lock by key, and our electronically controlled doors fail in the open mode. That means that if the system can't produce the right electronic and electric signals to keep them locked, they aren't locked. It makes sense, you can't have the system failing and locking a bunch of people inside the building.) Telecommunications? ha We run windows, so if our system is down a few days, who'd notice? Phone?? We'll have school even if our phone system doesn't work. (Most of our teachers would appreciate the chance to get more done.) Our bell system went out last spring. (We used a bullhorn to signal the end of classes. You can't believe how resourceful we can be when we have to.) Payroll???? In the first place, most schools pay on the 15 and 30, or just the 30 of the month, so we have at least 2 weeks before the staff would notice. Plenty of time to find a way. But in reality, anybody who would quit over lack of money has already left THIS profession. We are already accustomed to long hours, low pay, and having to make do with not having everything we want. To the disappointment of most of the students, and a lot of the teachers, there won't be any extension of vacation. We'll be open, even if Gary does think that not being able ring our bells will cause us to shut down forever!!

-- walt (walt@lcs.k12.ne.us), October 28, 1999.

Friends of the forum, we all know who the disrupters are, so I don't know why anyone bothers taking up bandwidth to answer them, particularly at length, and especially since we get so many "server busy" messages in the past two weeks. The only benefit "might" be in showing a few newbies that these goofs don't really look at the facts and should be disregarded.

-- Elaine Seavey (Gods1sheep@aol.com), October 28, 1999.

What?!?!?! You mena Kosky LIED to us about schoold needing those services to stay open??

Hmmm...if he's been lying about THAT, what ELSE do you suppose he hasn't been truthful about?

-- Pierre Bear (the@old.one), October 28, 1999.

no flush, no open

-- state law (health@reasons.safety), October 28, 1999.

No I wasn't quelled. I have a life, and I had to TCB for a while.

So... another Doom Zombie Platoon brings out the big guns and cuts me down with "the systems could go down".

I said don't use the word IF and you wriggle by me like a greasy snake.

Okay... don't use the words: if, could, maybe, possibly, what-if.

Tell me WHY the school WON'T be open. Oh that's right, nobody ever said they won't... they said, they would be surprised if they were open.

Yes, and I am sure that Mr, Yourdon is extremely surprised that Pigs can in fact fly. (...There is a possibility that the system won't crash on October 1, 1999. But then again there is a finite possibility that pigs will fly". (paraphrased)).

So, can anyone explain to me here why they would take someone opinion as fact? Escpecailly when that person giving the opinion doesn;t have the slightest clue what he/she is refering to? What the hell does the Education deputy know about the status of ALL the 1000 schools and those dozens of systems inside each one?

-- (ifs@ifs. and more ifs), October 28, 1999.

OK, let's take what Mr. If says one step further:

"So, can anyone explain to me here why they would take someone opinion as fact? Escpecailly when that person giving the opinion doesn;t have the slightest clue what he/she is refering to? What the hell does the Education deputy know about the status of ALL the 1000 schools and those dozens of systems inside each one? "

If you substitue the name "education deputy" with our beloved Y2K czar, doesn't this apply to Mr. Koskinen???

Sooo Mr. If, are you also saying that Mr. Koskinen doesn't have the slightest clue what he is refering to?

-- Forum Regular (Here@y2k.comx), October 28, 1999.

Mr. If

It is common practice here in Hawaii when the power goes down for a prolonged period of time, the school will close.

When there is no water service, the school will close.

When the toilets won't flush, the school will close.

When the cafeteria cannot make lunch for the hundreds of screaming kids, the school will close.

During the garbage-man strike in 1979 when garbage wasn't picked up for 3 to 4 weeks, the schools closed.

There you have it Mr. If... No one use of the words "if, could, maybe, possibly, what-if".

-- Forum Regular (Here@y2k.comx), October 28, 1999.

Every school in Australia for the entire month of January will be closed.

Why?

Australia has a 8? week school Holiday over the Xmas period.

So yet another reason why some schools will not be open at the beginning of next year.

-- Simon Richards (simon@wair.com.au), October 28, 1999.

Walt -

Nice to see you back. Weather must be getting a bit nippy out in Husker country about now.

How big is your school district? I ask because most major urban schools in my area (very SoCal) depend heavily on automation, from bus scheduling to enrollment and class assignment to payroll and on and on. Leaving out power or infrastructure failures (if the water stops around here, everything shuts down), there are no manual workarounds for handling the records for 1,100 K-8 kids at just one local elementary, let along the 3,800 teens at one of the four high schools within 20 miles of my home. Teachers are stretched thin as it is (what with dealing with gangs and drugs on campus and such); if the systems that handle some of the day-to-day go down, they will have to send kids home until they can get the systems straightened out. The risks and hassles are too great to do otherwise.

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.hid), October 28, 1999.

Mac, It's warm here, the only bad weather we have had was last Saturday in Texas.:-)

Agreeing that if the infrastructure shuts down, everything shuts down, my point is that a lot of things can slide for quite a while in a school system. Bus routes are already scheduled, classes are assigned, students are all enrolled. The big-wigs might not like it, the reports won't get written, but the teachers can keep things running for quite a while. If the only problems we encounter are with our own internal systems, school will start. Of course, there comes a point when things will have to be fixed, or they will stop.

-- walt (walt@lcs.k12.ne.us), October 28, 1999.

From: Y2K, ` la Carte by Dancr (pic), near Monterey, California

classes are assigned

Some portion of the schools is running on a schedule such that kids coming back from winter break will be starting a new semester, tri-mester or term. Around here we have year-round school, with students getting time off a few weeks here, a few weeks there, and everybody on a different schedule. When the scheduling of the kids requires a computer, this will be a problem, since the kids wouldn't already know their schedules.

Things may be much improved since I was in college, but in several of the schools where I attended and worked students either waited overnight in long lines to get first crack at admission to the classes that they needed to take, or they bid from a fixed total of points. With either method, computer programs are used to sort out the winners and losers.

In the first-come-first-served scenario the computers allowed several terminal operators to coordinate the total available seats, similar to the allocation of airline seats. In bidding scenarios, computers calculate the winners according to complitated formulas that would be difficult to duplicate by hand if large numbers of students are involved. These programs are highly date dependent.

Administrators could lose access to the programs for any number of reasons, beginning with power outage to the entire school. The computer itself may be non-compliant for some unknown reason. The operating system may choke, even if it's a newer one such as Windows 2000.

The program that does the sorting could easily leave something to be desired, especially if anybody is still running the one I threw together one afternoon in 1980. That one was on shakey legs in the best of times. I no longer have any idea what's in the thing or how long it survived.

-- Dancr (addy.available@my.webpage), October 29, 1999.