PORTLAND, Ore. — Portland Public Schools announced it won’t hand out computers to students on Friday after distribution on Thursday resulted in people waiting in line for hours while not practicing social distancing.
The district had planned to give computers Friday to students at four different sites: the district office, Roosevelt High School, Jefferson High School and Franklin High School. Scheduled distributions at all those sites on Friday have been canceled.
The district will resume handing out computers to students every day next week.
“With extremely high demand on Thursday, our current number of distribution-available computers is low,” the district said Thursday night.
Distribution of the computers, which is part of the district’s distance learning plan as in-person classes are canceled for the rest of the academic year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, led to a scene at Roosevelt High School Thursday that had social distancing advocates cringing.
There were crowds of people, some of which had to wait hours to get their computer, even though they registered online for a specific time slot.
Patricia Chavarria was one of those people and was not happy when she arrived and saw how many people were standing outside and waiting.
"This is just ridiculous. There’s no organization here," she said.
A PPS spokesperson told KGW the district had extra staff on-site to remind people to give each other space and that the high demand made wait times longer than expected.
The district will now work over the weekend to collect computers from school buildings and then sanitize and package them for students to take home.
“We believe that pausing on Friday will allow for a smoother, quicker process next week,” the district wrote Thursday night.
PPS said it has already distributed more than 6,000 computers.
