Portland Public Schools announced late Thursday that it will pause distributing Chromebooks for a day, allowing the district to smooth out the bumps in a process that left some parents waiting upward of three hours to check out a device.

“With extremely high demand on Thursday, our current number of distribution-available computers is low,” district officials wrote in a statement. “We are pausing distribution and we will not distribute computers on Friday, April 10 at any of the four previously scheduled sites: PPS district office, Roosevelt HS, Jefferson HS and Franklin HS.”

A school resource officer at Franklin High called the blocks-long queue there a “trainwreck.”

The line of parents, students and teachers on the sidewalk stretched for six blocks and around part of the Southeast Portland campus.

Automobiles also queued up on side streets. One such line stretched from Woodward Street to Powell Boulevard, or about one-third of a mile.

Parents and teachers waiting at Franklin told The Oregonian/OregonLive they were picking up multiple Chromebooks in an effort to minimize the number of their neighbors setting out to procure one.

A few said they hadn’t anticipated needing a district-issued machine, but were having trouble accessing the online learning portal with their own tablets and home computers.

The district launched its distance learning programs Monday, three weeks after Oregon Gov. Kate Brown ordered the state’s public schools to shutter in an effort to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus.

District spokeswoman Karen Werstein told The Oregonian/OregonLive that Portland Public Schools had lent out about 6,000 Chromebooks by Thursday evening, about 2,000 of which were checked out this week.

In announcing the one-day halt to the lending program, officials said they need shore up their supply of sanitized devices.

“We will work on Friday and over the weekend to collect computers from our school buildings and then sanitize, prepare and package the devices,” officials wrote. “Distribution will resume on Monday, April 13 and we will continue distributing computers every day next week. We believe that pausing on Friday will allow for a smoother, quicker process next week.”

--Eder Campuzano | 503-221-4344 | @edercampuzano

Do you have a tip about Portland Public Schools? Email Eder at ecampuzano@oregonian.com or message either of the social accounts above.

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