TAMPA, Fla. — It was a rough but somewhat expected start to Hillsborough County School District's Smart Start Week.

Between 7-10 a.m. Monday, more than 220,000 teachers and students were logging in to the districts new eLearning App Canvas as well as hundreds of Zoom meetings.  

That totals around 1,200 logins per minute.

The inundation of web traffic to online services led to a brief crash of the system. However, by late morning kids and teachers had full access to online learning with little problems.

Superintendent Addison Davis says eLearning technology is becoming the most important element of students staying connected to the classroom.

On Tuesday, the school board is expected to approve the new budget for it's Zoom contract, $165,000 total fiscal impact for the 20-21 school year at a cost of around .75 cents per user.

"Right now we've had and housed over 225,000 zoom meetings, and in that we've had 15,000 licenses that we've purchased and we've had over 66 million minutes used on Zoom so it's definitely a platform that we need," Davis said.

Many students, parents and teachers were met with this screen when signing onto the district's ELearning site Monday. (Spectrum News image)

Hillsborough County students that elected to return to brick-and-mortar classrooms will do so next Monday, while those that elected for eLearning will continue from home for the first half of the school year.

Internet traffic will sharply drop-off once classrooms reopen, however Canvas and Zoom will remain critical backups for classroom learners should the district need to sporadically shut schools in the event of Coronavirus outbreaks.