Elementary school sends mass email with every student’s report card
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SHELLEY — A large group of parents in Shelley School District 60 were surprised Wednesday when they received their child’s report card along with about 380 other report cards — one for every student at Hazel Stuart Elementary School.
And this isn’t the first time an incident like this has happened.
A mass email that contained hundreds of report cards went out to all children’s parents and guardians Wednesday afternoon, school officials said. The documents included grades and student IDs.
“I thought it was fixed,” Shelley School District Superintendent Dr. Bryan Jolley said. “Evidently it wasn’t fixed because one of the secretaries didn’t follow the procedures and sent (the email) out without anybody second-checking the file.”
The school district implemented new policies and procedures for data management last year after Shelley High School staff accidentally sent a mass email to parents with the personal information of every student with three to five absences.
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After the Shelley High School incident, Jolley said he spoke with administrators and created policies regarding how mass emails were to be sent using the PowerSchool software. PowerSchool keeps track of students and allows administrators to easily send emails to students’ parents with specific information, including report cards and attendance.
“It’s not the program’s fault — it absolutely is not,” Jolley said. “This is totally a human mistake.”
Jolley said disciplinary action will be taken, and administrators will be retrained on how to use the program.
“We feel terrible about it and wish we could turn back time,” Hazel Stuart Elementary Principal Jared Heath said. “Right now, we’re just doing everything we can to make sure that information doesn’t stay out there and that this problem doesn’t happen in the future.”