New school and the ongoing internet saga

The fire destroyed the elementary school and damaged the high school. It took until Oct. before the high school could be cleaned and the students allowed back in, but for the elementary kids, their school became a group of portables, moved onto the back playground.

The site of the fire was cleaned up. A construction company moved in. For the rest of that academic year, and all of the next, the elementary students worked in the portables, their school campus resembling a little migrant village.

This month, their new school was ready. Excited elementary students returned to gleaming new classrooms, the portables gone and new landscaping out front. In fact, their new school and the old junior-senior high next door looked like one school, since architects had attached the new to the old and cosmetically altered the old building so that its exterior resembled the new.

In the past, students in both schools were used to sharing. They shared the gymnasium and they shared the cafeteria. Now they also share the library, which is located where the high school library has always been located, but which has been expanded so that it includes the elementary library.

Their teachers now share a staffroom, too, and administration offices have been moved to the new area between the junior-senior high school wing and the elementary wing. The main entrance is now between the two wings, and a new bus lane drops the students off so that they can enter there.

Across the front, construction workers tacked the words North Queens School. Wait a minute. North Queens School? When there used to be a North Queens Rural High School and a North Queens Elementary School, and with the Greenfield School a part of the family, it was called The North Queens Schools. North Queens School doesn't have much of a ring to it.

Soon there will be an open house, to display the hard work of the construction workers, teachers, students, administration, school advisory council, parents and school board. I'll report more after that.

On Monday of the week before this, our high speed internet went down. Those who have stumbled upon this column over the past few years know something of the saga of broadband internet in the North Queens area, and now the saga continues.

EastLink took over the provision of internet service in North Queens, purchasing the assets of the bankrupt TDC Broadband. We were a part of what then became a trial period for high speed in the area, as EastLink worked to improve the service. When that trial period ended, we expected to become regular customers and pay a monthly fee.

A small army of EastLink technicians and trainees came to hook us up. Unlike TDC, they would not install the receiving modules on roofs but rather on the exterior walls of houses. So they ran into a problem: while we had a strong rooftop signal from a tower in Harmony, there was no signal whatsoever that could be found with a module on the wall.

One technician said, "Those TDC guys, they could find the sweet spots."

However, there was another tower much closer to us, on the Broham Road. The EastLink representatives said they would be installing a broadcasting unit on the side facing in our direction, and when they did, they would hook us up. In the meantime, they would leave the rooftop module functioning. And when I offered to sign papers and open our account, they said to wait until the installation was complete.

Things worked perfectly. We had a strong, fast signal. Secure in the knowledge that EastLink was behind the operation, we finally cancelled our backup dialup account, saying goodbye to a system that had stood by us for 14 years.

Now we have no internet, slow or fast. I checked with others on the same tower as we were, and they were still connected. It may be my own equipment at fault. Or was the broadcasting power dropped? After calling EastLink and navigating through a series of automated robot voices, punching numbers and hoping for the best, we finally got to a helpful technician who went to work on the problem, but as of this writing, without success.

So the saga continues.

Tom Sheppard can (usually) be reached at twsheppard@gmail.com