More Than 11,000 PA Cyber Families Hit With Robocalls Saying Their Student Was Unenrolled
MIDLAND, PA (KDKA) - It was an evening filled with phone calls for students enrolled with PA Cyber after robocalls informed parents that their child was unenrolled in the program.
"Technology, it can sometimes give you unexpected results," said Brian Hayden, the CEO at PA Cyber.
Hayden told KDKA that technology got the best of them on Wednesday.
"It just sounded like something was wrong. It said they had the record that my child had withdrawn from the school and that they had not received the technology back -- the laptop," said Laura Doheny, whose child is enrolled in the second grade at PA Cyber.
That robocall went out to over 11,000 families enrolled with the school and not just once.
"As I was listening to that recording, another call was coming through from that same phone number. Honestly, we kept getting those calls about every five minutes for a half-hour," Doheny said.
Hayden said the call was only supposed to go to a handful of families who did unenroll a student. Now the school is working to find out what went wrong.
"We are working with the vendor to try to determine how this happened because the Excel spreadsheet had just those families. And instead, it went to what we call 'PA Cyber ALL,' which it should not have," Hayden told KDKA.
The multiple families that spoke with KDKA said after the fifth or sixth call, it was obvious to them that something was wrong and they were confident their child still had a spot at the school.
"Even today, we got an email from the teacher, an email from the academic advisor, an email from the school. So they covered all their bases in making sure everyone knew it was a mistake and not to worry about it," Doheny said.
Hayden continued to apologize to the families and encourages any parent that may still be concerned or have questions to reach out to their academic advisor.