Much to the frustration of students, internet access has remained temperamental since the beginning of the school year, coming to a head last week when most students on campus were unable to connect to the web at all. Oftentimes, the designated Wi-Fi ID “fuhsd” is incapable of connecting to devices or appearing at all. Some have resorted to utilizing mobile hotspots to complete critical classwork or surf the web, at the cost of racking up cellular data usage.

Students who use Google Docs or other online word processing applications in class were hit especially hard, as many were prevented from retrieving and editing documents saved online.

“The internet is a critical part of me doing my work at school, since I’m taking [American Literature Honors],” junior Shakked Bueller said. “I don’t want to write twenty-page essays…I want to be able to type [them].”

Some classes that relied on the use of Google Chromebooks or other web-based computers were brought to a standstill.

“Especially in [World] Core, we use chromebooks a lot,” sophomore Jeremi Kalkowski said. “So we were doing absolutely nothing for two days.”

In the past, issues on the main network could be circumvented by utilizing the school guest network, but such a network has, as of this year, been terminated to free up bandwidth for the main network, according to School Dean Leslie Robledo.

“[The school internet] is like a parking garage… and ours is full”

“[The school internet] is like a parking garage… and ours is full,” Robledo said. “Students, teachers, we’re all affected…We have 2,300 students. If you think of all the devices that students have…it’s very taxing on the system.”

She went on to acknowledge the importance of the issue to the school and the district, assuring that the infrastructure is being examined and improved.

As of Oct. 4, the school “fuhsd” network returned to being fully functional, but administrators are still working to ensure the reliability of the internet system.