In the wake of COVID-19, students have become increasingly dependent on technology to complete their everyday classwork. Unfortunately, this development only seemed to exacerbate Berkley’s internet difficulties. “When I’m in class, doing the work is already hard enough. What we certainly don’t need is slow connections and trouble accessing the internet,” Senior Jonah Chupack states, and he wasn’t alone in this struggle. While not the norm, in some cases, teachers have had to postpone deadlines and move assignments around to accommodate the unreliability of the school’s Wi-Fi.  

Fortunately, the Berkley Administration and IT department have become aware of this problem, and have been doing everything they can to solve it. Mr. Meloche expands on this issue, revealing that,  “At various points last year we noticed that there was a lag on the wifi and whole classes were having issues.” According to Mr. Meloche, in late September, BHS had a company come into the school in order to  “update all BHS Wi-Fi access points.” He went on to explain that “[BHS] had some access points added in a few of the areas [that had] weak coverage.” These upgrades offered various improvements, including less lagging, accessibility across many devices, and faster internet.

The obvious cause of these problems is the fact that BHS has in a short space of time become a 1:1 technology school, meaning that each student brings at least one internet device with them to class. This trial and error upgrading of existing equipment is not uncommon when large spaces accommodate a change in overall device load. Berkley High School, for example, has a little over 1300 students in the building on any given day. These 1300 students not only connect to the internet with their laptop, but most likely their phone as well. Understandably, this high demand for Wi-Fi requires a fast and responsive network. And when up to “3000+ devices” (per Mr. Meloche) are trying to access the internet at the same time, unforeseen complications sometimes happen.  The network became overloaded, the excessive demand piled up, and nobody was satisfied with their internet connection. 

As a fourth year student at Berkley, Chupack was no stranger to this issue, and attests: “There are a lot of kids who plan on getting the majority of their work done at school, and Wi-Fi is necessary to do that.”

Fellow senior Anna Lalo was in the same boat as Chupack, agreeing that the Wi-Fi of the past “works differently in every hallway, and it can sometimes be a problem.” Upon learning about the recent upgrades, Lalo responds that she’s “looking forward to the improvements.” 

But these issues weren’t exclusive to seniors, underclassmen had caught on to the internet struggles too. Sophomore Harper Stacey concurs: “Depending on where you are in the school, it can be pretty bad. It’s very hard to do work when the Wi-Fi is not working.” Like Lalo, Stacey was relieved to hear about the internet developments, adding: “I think it’ll benefit everyone, especially since we’re all using computers all the time.” 

Thanks to the BHS technology department and administration, these issues are now a thing of the past. Now, students and staff alike can look forward to classes being efficiently executed- or better said in the words of Jonah Chupack: “Get hip Berkley, we need a connection!”