Infinite Campus erroneously enrolled and dropped roughly 2,000 District 219 students in a sophomore English section on Sept. 22. Simultaneously, the site incorrectly assigned detention notices to randomized students, parents and teachers. D219’s IT (Information Technology) team quickly dissolved the notices on Sept. 23.
On the evening of Tuesday, Sept. 23, Assistant Principal Andrew Sinclair sent an email to D219 staff that read, “We would like to inform you that a technical issue occurred last night, which inadvertently triggered emails to some students, staff, and parents regarding detentions that were not earned. We understand the concern this may have caused and want to assure you that the issue is being addressed.”
“This happened at both Niles West and Niles North. Our IT team worked quickly to fix the issue. Any incorrect detentions were reviewed and removed, and the emails sent in error were deleted from D219 inboxes. Parents and guardians who received these messages were also notified,” Sinclair said.
Most students resolved their detentions at their in-school attendance office. A West senior, who requested to be anonymous, received a detention from a sophomore English class that was not in their schedule; it appeared as “dropped” in their attendance on Infinite Campus.
“I received an email saying I had an hour of detention, but I knew it wasn’t right because it was from a teacher I don’t have for any of my classes,” an anonymous senior said. “I was mistakenly enrolled in eighth-period sophomore english. It doesn’t show on my actual schedule in Infinite Campus, just in attendance that I had apparently dropped it, but I have study hall that period, so I knew something was wrong.”
Out of the 2,615 students at Niles West, almost 2,000 were rostered to Sally Graham‘s sophomore english class. Some of those students received detentions for absences from Graham’s class.
“We realized [some] detentions were issued in error from or linked to staff members who those students were not enrolled in their classes. So that was one element of this that we identified along the way,” Assistant Principal David Hawk said.
After determining the problem, the D219 technology department discovered the root of the issue. The errors had only occurred for the D219 Infinite Campus, revealing that it was not an issue with Infinite Campus’s national platform.
“The problem was only for D219 Infinite Campus. It was a mistake not caught by our D219 staff in how to use a particular tool when using bulk rostering of students,” D219 Director of Information Services Richard Ardisana said.
The technology department fixed the issue in one day, removing mistaken students from the sophomore english section and deleting detention notifications.
“Our team resolved the issue by correcting the course rosters and updating the programming logic that triggered the detention/warnings. While mistakes of this nature are rare, we continue to monitor processes and provide training to reduce the likelihood of a similar incident occurring in the future,” Ardisana said.
Although D219 administrators cannot prevent the error from recurring, they maintain a positive growth mindset.
“Just like we expect of our students, when we make mistakes, we have to acknowledge them, right? Make it right, and then just ensure that we learn and grow from it so it doesn’t happen again. And I’m confident that’s the case,” Hawk said.
