When students arrived at the BOHS campus May 13 to take the Advanced Placement (AP) exams they’d been preparing for since August, they expected to put to the test months of notetaking, research, and late-night study sessions. What they didn’t expect was a district-wide internet outage that forced the postponement of their exams.
Brea Olinda Unified School District’s (BOUSD) internet went down at approximately 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, a result of equipment failure at an AT&T facility in Anaheim, according to Josh Barton, BOUSD’s IT Specialist.
The outage impacted three exams on Tuesday, two on Wednesday, another three on Thursday, and approximately 300 students overall, according to Pamela De Jong, Administrative Assistant for Activities.
Following College Board protocols for test disruptions, Hillary Herrington, assistant principal, announced to the student body via email that all AP exams scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday were postponed due to the “ongoing internet connectivity issues.”
Tests affected include:
- AP English Language and Composition
- AP Physics C: Mechanics
- AP Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism
- AP Spanish Language and Culture
- AP Computer Science Principles
The outage was especially troublesome for AP test-takers due to the College Board replacing paper exams for 28 of 36 offered subjects with the digital Bluebook software in spring 2024. According to College Board, the transition to digital exams is to provide “an easier and more secure testing process for schools.”
Halfway into third period May 13, students and staff were notified via intercom announcement that the AP Environmental Science exam scheduled for 12 p.m. was cancelled due to the lost internet connection. The Bluebook exams require a Wi-Fi connection to download sections of the test to the BOHS-supplied Chromebooks.
Elsewhere, students who took the AP Precalculus exam in the BOHS library discovered the outage upon completion of their tests. While test-takers were able to complete the exam, an internet connection was necessary to submit their final answers. Students were assured by the proctor, then again by Herrington via email, that their tests would be submitted to College Board when service was restored.
Joey Davis, principal, praised Herrington’s response to the crisis. “As soon as [Herrington] realized the situation, she called the College Board on how to handle it,” Davis said.
The disruption extended into May 14 as AT&T technicians awaited “an additional part” on order, resulting in the postponement of that day’s tests.
Internet was restored by 9:13 p.m. Wednesday. Davis announced to BOHS faculty via email that “network services seemed to be working again.” However, by then, Thursday’s tests — AP Computer Science Principles, AP Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism, and AP Spanish Language and Culture — had already been postponed.
The cancellations led to both frustration and relief from test-takers.
For AP Language and Composition student Aiden Duenas (‘26), the postponement amplified the already-onerous task of preparing. “The delay makes preparing for the exam much more difficult because it forces me to retain information for a whole extra week,” Duenas said. “The stress adds onto other AP tests, sports, extracurriculars, finals, and my personal life.”
Brian Wang (‘26), who is taking three AP exams, said, “Mentally, this added more weight onto my shoulders, as my schedule will just continue to be squished.”
AP Computer Science Principles student Maddy Hong (‘27) said of the delay: “I was mentally prepared to just get it over with. I had everything reviewed and was ready to take the exam, so now it’s like I have to stay in that ‘exam mode’ for another week.”
Andrew Andrade (’25), who was supposed to take the APES exam May 13, said, “I feel a lot more stressed out by the exam with the new date of testing. It’s in the morning and I don’t really [perform] mentally in the first hours of the day…when originally I was coming into it with full confidence.”
Some students, however, acknowledged that the delays provide extra time to prepare.
APES student Luke Oh (‘26) considers the delay a “blessing in disguise.” While initially “a bit stressed,” Oh views the extra week as “a chance to try new preparation techniques.”
Jason Cho (‘28), who is taking the AP Computer Science Principles exam, admitted how he was initially stressed. “I wasn’t confident in my abilities to pass the test,“ Cho said. But with the delay, he’s more optimistic. “I have more time to study and I’ll be more familiar with the material with more time,” he added.
For the teachers who spent the past eight months preparing their students for exam day, the outage was particularly upsetting.
“I’m super sad,” Andrea Ramos, APES teacher, said. “The kids were really well prepared. We worked really hard to get to this point, and I know they were mentally ready for it.”
According to Ramos, the postponed testing halts the momentum that leads up to exam day, dates that have been etched onto teacher and students calendars since the first week of school.
“By pushing [the exam] out further a couple of weeks, the kids will be ‘checked out’ and ‘over’ the exam,” Ramos said. Ramos intends to spend just another day before the exam doing “a quick review” to avoid “overloading them.”
“My first thought was just worry for my students,” Matthew Finnerty, AP Pre-Calculus teacher, said. “I was stressed and anxious because if they knew that there were problems during their test, I know it would take away from their focus. I didn’t want this to affect them in any way.”
With internet fully restored, testing continues as scheduled, with AP Physics 1 at 8 a.m. and AP Psychology at 12 p.m. tomorrow.
