OOPS

Thousands of Halton parents get unwanted wake-up call

By Adrian Morrow/Toronto Star

News
Jan 18, 2010

It's one thing to install a new auto-dial software system. But it's quite another to announce it to 25,000 households at 5 o'clock on a Saturday morning.

That's what happened to the Halton District School Board this weekend when it accidentally sent out a phone message to parents, advising them that school was canceled.

To add to the embarrassment of school board officials, the message warning of "inclement weather" went out on a balmy morning.

And, of course, it was Saturday.

The trouble began last Monday when, eager to try out an updated version of the system, school board officials held a test run.

An employee created an automated message advising that bad weather had forced the closure of every school in the region for the day and fed it into the system. Once the test was done, the worker thought she had deleted the message.

She was wrong.

At 5 a.m. Saturday, the system started calling homes in Burlington, Oakville and the surrounding area. The employee who made the mistake was one of the people woken up.

Realizing something had gone awry, she scrambled to fix the problem, but it was too late. By 5:30 a.m., every household had been called.

"I was just so distressed from it," said Julie Goode, who lives in southeast Burlington with her husband and two children.

"I leapt out of bed because I thought it was about my parents. That's the first thing you think, is that it's something bad. Then they said the schools are closed. I thought it was a practical joke."

Oakville resident Sharon De Vellis, mother of two children, rises at 6 a.m. on weekdays and was looking forward to catching an extra hour or two of shut-eye Saturday morning.

It was not to be. At 5:07 a.m., she got the call.

"I did grapple for the phone, thinking that someone had died," she recalled.

De Vellis laughed off the rude awakening Saturday afternoon, as she tried to distract her kids with a movie while she stole off to take a nap.

Board officials promised to take steps so it doesn't happen again.

- with files from The Hamilton Spectator

as reported in the Oakville Beaver

Blogged with the Flock Browser