What is usually a quick and effective means to communicate with parents turned into a false alarm this morning when a Biloxi Junior High School employee inadvertently notified parents of all 1,141 students that their children were not in school today.

The message was supposed to go only to the parents of 72 students who were not in school today.

An employee in the Pupil Accounting office at the junior high school sent out a corrected message, within 30 minutes of the original call. Dozens of parents, however, still called the school to determine if their child was indeed in school today.

"The Connect-Ed messages are an important tool we have to let parents know what's going on at schools in the district," Superintendent Dr. Paul A. Tisdale said. "In this particular case, the employee made a slip of a key stroke. Instead of checking the box that said to send the message to specific recipients, they checked the box that said 'all.' We've reviewed the procedures with employees to make sure this does not happen again.

"We certainly apologize for the inconvenience. I don’t think this is the way anyone wanted to start off the week."

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