ROCKVILLE, Md. — Thousands of parents in Maryland were mistakenly told their children had been placed on a waiting list for a program for gifted students.
Letters were sent last month to more than 5,000 families in Montgomery County, telling them their third-grade children were on the waiting list for one of the schools system’s Centers for Enriched Studies. Thirteen elementary schools in the district offer accelerated curriculums to gifted students.
Days later, parents received a second letter saying a “printing error” had resulted in them getting the wrong letter. The second letter said the students’ current elementary school can meet their needs.
Montgomery County Public Schools spokeswoman Gboyinde Onijala explained that there was a glitch in the system that led to the wrong letters being sent to families in late April.
The system is automated. A code is entered to generate letters saying one of two things: either that students had been placed on a waitlist, or that they would remain at their home schools where staff would work to “meet the needs” of that child.
“You put in the code, and it prints out the batches of letters,” Onijala explained. “It was human error basically that we put the wrong code in and those families received the wrong information in their letters.”
Onijala said as soon as the error was detected, the follow-up letters were sent out.
“We want to of course, apologize to all of those families,” she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
