The North Vancouver School District got a failing grade in online reporting Friday after a number of North Vancouver parents hoping to access their children’s report cards found themselves locked out of the system.
School district officials were first alerted to the problem after parents were unable to log in to the online report cards just before the start of Spring Break.
That prompted a flurry of phone calls to schools, along with some grumbling on social media from parents who worried about having to report high school students’ marks for university entrance applications by the end of the month.
Parents of up to half the students in the school district were affected.
School district staff soon realized what had happened, said Deneka Michaud, spokeswoman for the North Vancouver School District.
“It was just human error on our side,” she said – a district staffer who logged into the system to help one parent reset a password accidentally reset all of the passwords.
Michaud said as soon as staff figured out the problem, both an email and voice message were sent to parents, advising them they would have to reset their passwords again in order to log in.
That solved the problem for most parents, said Michaud, although she acknowledged some people have continued to have problems logging on to the system. The fix may be different depending on what browser people are using, she said.
Michaud said any parents who are still having trouble should contact the school district office, which is open over Spring Break, and IT staff will work with them individually to resolve problems.
In some cases, if technology staff have noticed multiple unsuccessful attempts to log in, they will call parents as well, she said.
“We’re really sorry for the inconvenience.”
In some cases, parents have continued to have problems logging in from their mobile phones.
Michaud said that problem wasn’t caused by the district, but an upgrade to the provincial mobile platform where the report cards are entered.
Parents can work around that by logging in from a desktop computer until the upgrade is complete.
The online report cards are being piloted in most North Vancouver schools for the first time this year, although they have been in use in some schools for longer.
Under the system, parents log in to a provincial education portal My Education BC to access the report cards online.
Online reporting for the first report card in the fall went well, said Michaud, and most parents appreciated being able to access the information electronically rather than pulling crumpled paper from the bottom of a backpack.
“The feedback from the parents was fabulous.”
