A problem with a vendor’s service caused some Bristol Township parents to nearly miss out on the news that classes were delayed by two hours Friday morning.
Several parents contacted LevittownNow.com Friday morning inquiring about whether the township’s public school would open late or at all, noting the district did not send out a notification via phone or email.
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Bristol Township School District Superintendent Dr. Melanie Gehrens said the problem with the alerts not going out was to blame on a third-party vendor.
“At the worst time imaginable, that vendor experienced a system failure. Our IT department was able to identify a workaround to this issue, but notifications were late and many did not go out,” she said.
While the direct-to-parents alerts did not go out at first, news organizations and the district’s Facebook page were used to get the word out before the usual school start time. In addition, LevittownNow.com‘s morning announcement of the two-hour delay was removed from Facebook technical glitch before being restored around 8 a.m.
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The school district’s 5:15 a.m. post announcing the delay generated more than 300 shares and, according to social media tracking tool Crowdtangle, was the third most read Facebook post from any Lower Bucks County school district over the past day.
“We anticipate that our third-party vendor will take appropriate measures to prevent such an issue from occurring again In our school district and others. We regret the inconvenience this incident caused our families,” Gehrens said.
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