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Google issues force Chesterfield Schools into Monday morning delay

Posted at 7:48 AM, Dec 14, 2020
and last updated 2020-12-14 07:48:10-05

CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. -- An outage impacting Google has prompted the delay of Chesterfield County Public Schools on Monday.

As a result:

  • Chesterfield County Public Schools will start the day with a two-hour delay for instruction for Cohort Nos. 2-4.
  • Cohort No. 1 (Level 2 special education) students will report on time.

"We will continue to evaluate Google’s services, which support our email and our Google Meets environments this morning and will follow up with any additional information as necessary," Chesterfield Schools spokesperson Tim Bullis wrote in an email to families.

According to Down Detector, a crowdsourced website where users report an outage of websites and other telecommunications issues, there was a spike in outages on several Google productivity clients like Gmail, Google Hangouts, Google Classroom and Google Drive at about 7 a.m. ET on Monday morning. As of about 7:45 a.m. ET, it appeared that many of those services had been restored.

The issues with Google productivity tools came at a time when millions are relying on them to work or attend class remotely as the country continues to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.