ORLANDO, Fla. — It’s day two of virtual learning for students across Florida, as kids and parents work to get their schoolwork done from home.

Day one brought challenges for many around Orange County Public Schools and surrounding school districts counties as online systems went down.

OCPS district leaders say after so many issues with their systems yesterday, they went to the vendors and got to work making needed changes and improvements so that tens of thousands of students could log-in easily to get schoolwork done online.  And already it’s working much better.

“It’s been good, considering we’ve had to make this giant change in all our lives,” said Christina Carlisi, an OCPS mother.

On a typical school day, Christina Carlisi would be out running her play-place business and dance studio in Orlando. Her 9-year-old daughter Bailey often able to help out with teaching classes in the studio after school.

Now with schools closed and her businesses temporarily closed down, both Christina and Bailey are home getting used to their new routine, both working and going to school from home.

"Virtual learning on the student-end for my daughter has been one of the bigger challenges," Christina Carlisi said. "Trying to get everything set up and trying to understand the platform, trying to work through the learning curve of the teachers presenting the information and then also, us trying to download the stuff in real-time. There were lags yesterday with everybody jumping on which was expected. It was a little better today but there will still some files that were hard to download."

“We know that there were some hiccups on day one. And we’ve worked very hard with our vendors to make sure that today will be much smoother for our teachers and our students,” said Maurice Draggon, OCPS Senior Director of Digital Learning.

OCPS uses three online systems, Draggon said — Launchpad, Big Blue Button and Canvas.

With massive log-ins yesterday together with larger than expected needs for program support and server space, many of the virtual learning programs went down.  That compounded with a thousands of students and teachers logging in at the same time, where log-ins would be staggered typically with school start times, added to the overload.

"What you had happen yesterday is you had basically everyone getting up around 9 o’clock and logging in at the same time," Draggon said. "So we said we have to right-size the system and make sure that if we see a pattern. or we know that we’re going to see peaks at a certain time, that we’re ready for those peaks."

And they’ve since upped all their virtual program needs so systems work smoother for students.

“It’s not something that we can sit back now and say, well everything is okay. We’re going to make sure we stay vigilant and monitor every system, every day to make sure it’s a smooth experience for teachers and students," Draggon said.

As OCPS steadily makes system adjustments and improvements, families like Carlisi’s adjust to their new normal at home.  Christina now teaches her dance classes virtually, using programs online to interact with her dance students, staying connected and learning the dance choreography from home instead.

Still, they’re hopeful that eventually, they can go back to their old routine, leaving the virtual learning at home.

“We would love to be able to get back to our normal routine where she has her school work, she does it at school. I have my work and I do it at home and we continue on with our day,” Carlisi said.