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Zoom outages cause virtual learning headaches for parents across metro Atlanta

ATLANTA — A popular video conferencing platform experienced outages worldwide, including here in metro Atlanta Monday. It caused a lot of frustrations for parents and students with their virtual classes.

Zoom has been adopted by businesses and schools to supplement their workflow as many look for virtual options. The service was down for several hours starting around 8 a.m. this morning.

A little after 1 p.m, families received a message from the Cobb County School District that said the problem was resolved. After some issues last week, Cobb parents tell Channel 2′s Chris Jose the frustration is mounting.

“It’s very frustrating,” mother Kathy Dunn told Jose. “Her teacher ended the session early because it was kicking them off and on, on Zoom.”

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Cobb wasn’t the only metro Atlanta school district affected. Marietta City Schools Atlanta Public Schools, Gwinnett County and Fayette County all reported disruptions with live instruction.

“There was a message that went out that was saying that zoom wasn’t working,” father Chris Cobb said. “There was a fall back to teams and just a flurry of emails with parents confused and just trying to figure out what to do with their kids this morning. "

Last week, Cobb County’s virtual platform called CTLS crashed on the first day of school. It went down again for several hours on Friday.

“I’ve got to be at work. My wife has to be at work. And I know I speak for a lot of other parents who have to have their focus on their jobs,” Chris Cobb said.

While the district said students had access to the online tool, Chris Cobb believes the day was a wash because his kids couldn’t see their teacher. Dunn agreed.

“It’s like a scavenger hunt just to find the right link to even connect to whatever they decide to use,” she said.

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