ARLINGTON, Va. — Officials at Arlington Public Schools are asking parents experiencing any email problems to contact the Parent Help Desk after they fixed a technical issue that frustrated many parents over the summer.
Numerous parents reported how emails sent to teachers using their Gmail accounts failed to go through. In many cases, their emails would bounce back a few days later.
It appeared APS emails were automatically rejecting any incoming messages from Gmail. Parents including Camille Galdes said it made communicating difficult since the only contact information they have is an email address, not a phone number.
Galdes noticed the problem in June when she tried to contact a school coordinator about the Individualized Education Plan (IEP) for her young son with special needs. She experienced a similar issue when she was communicating with a school board member to discuss a concern.
“It’s really frustrating because to add this extra layer to monitor my emails to see if I received a bounce back made it feel like a full-time job,” Galdes told WUSA9. “I realized, if every time I sent an email, I needed to call someone to follow up to make sure they received it.”
“I just want to be able to communicate as necessary,” APS parent Jessica Kaufman added.
As of recently, Galdes and Kaufman have not sent an email to determine if they will receive another bounce-back message.
Through the Facebook group “Arlington Education Matters”, other parents complained about the email system. Most of the parents experienced the problem over the summer, some before the end of the last school year.
However, APS spokesperson Frank Bellavia said the issue has been fixed.
“There was a brief issue with emails in early July that was identified,” Bellavia explained. “Most of the cases reporting this issue were Gmail-related accounts. We contacted Google and made internal system changes to remediate the issue. Since then, we have not had any system-wide issues related to email.”
Parents hope the solution is a permanent fix since some mentioned how they notified IT in the past. They claim this issue, while not widespread, may have existed for a few months. In the same Facebook group, a teacher said was experiencing email problems for more than a year and needed IT to “release” the specific email.
Kaufman said with communication being a priority, she wished there was a notification from the school system.
“Even if it's technological and out of control and has something to do with Gmail, it would be nice if they would communicate to parents that Gmail is not the effective option,” Kaufman added.