At crime- and drug-ridden Eastside High School in Paterson, New Jersey, Clark expelled 300 students in a single day for fighting, vandalism, abusing teachers and drug possession. President Ronald Reagan offered Clark a White House policy adviser position after his success at the high school. Morgan Freeman starred as Clark in the 1989 film “Lean on Me” that was loosely based on Clark’s tenure at Eastside. He also wrote “Laying Down the Law: Joe Clark’s Strategy for Saving Our Schools,” detailing his methods for turning around Eastside High. ___This story has been corrected to show that the county of the school Clark taught at is in Passaic County, not Essex County.

A Google services outage this week and potential impacts from a snowstorm in the Northeast highlight the fragile chain of connectivity that's powering widespread remote learning during the coronavirus pandemic. One Ohio school superintendent called Monday's Google outage the COVID version of a snow day." “Google is down across the globe, which is the COVID version of a snow day,” Superintendent Joe Clark tweeted to followers from his Nordonia Hills City School District in northern Ohio. Teacher Becky Richter said high school students in her first class that day had trouble accessing Google Classroom for about half an hour, as well as their Zoom video meeting, which uses Google logins. Rarely, it could be due to malicious attacks, but that didn't appear to be the case with Google on Monday.