The Burnaby school district is still scrambling to fix its online registration system while more than 6,000 students wait to sign up.
Registration was scheduled to open April 18, but after the online system crashed several times that day, district officials decided to shut down all registrations until the problem was fixed.
“Part of the issues we’ve heard in the past is just around fairness of being able to register,” assistant superintendent Roberto Bombelli told the NOW Tuesday, “and we felt, because the online piece isn’t working, we wouldn’t take phone calls and we wouldn’t take people walking in either. They’ll all be turned on and off, so to speak, at the same time.”
The district announced all registrations would be postponed until Monday (April 25), but a notice on the district website that day announced the technical problems had not been resolved.
“Once we are set to relaunch we will provide three days’ notice of a new registration date,” reads the statement.
Bombelli said the issue had to do with the age of the server and that a new server was being built.
“They were testing it through the weekend,” he said. “Last I actually heard Sunday night was that it seemed to be going OK but then it wasn’t.”
The district decided to give the public three days’ notice before reopening registration, Bombelli said, so that people who have to come to the board office to provide documentation before registering would have a chance to plan ahead.
If the online issue can’t be resolved, the assistant superintendent said the district might eventually have to resort to signing everyone up in person or over the phone.
“We might need to resort to that but we’re hoping not to simply because when I look at the numbers and the kind of volume that’s expected, that is a lot of phone calls and a lot of people lining up,” Bombelli said.
About 8,000 attended summer school classes in Burnaby last year. Before the system shut down last week, only about 2,100 managed to register, leaving about 6,000 still waiting to sign up.
