ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – A strange technical glitch Thursday morning confused some families in the Anchorage School District as students waited to find out whether or not they would be attending school in person.

Shortly after 7 a.m. Thursday, families received an email in Latin, just hours after learning the county would face a two-hour delay because of slick and icy roads in the Anchorage Bowl.

“If you Google it, it really has nothing to do with distance learning because school is canceled because of the weather. To be honest, I didn’t really understand what it was about,” said Kenya Sharp, an ASD parent.

The email, the district said, was intended to inform parents that ASD would be moving to a remote learning day, with the exception of Girdwood K-8. Additionally, all extracurricular activities and community rentals have been canceled.

According to the district, this happened due to a technical error in its mass notification system called Finalsite, a program the district uses to send emails, text messages and app alerts.

“To ensure that all language translations reach the appropriate families, the template has been published in Latin instead. We don’t know why yet,” said Corey Allen Young, a district spokesman. “We apologize for the error and any confusion it may have caused.”

An updated message was shared with families at 7:20 a.m

According to the district, there are at least five languages ​​into which family content is translated. These languages ​​include English, Spanish, Samoan, Hmong and Tagalog. The district said it is currently working with Finalsite to eliminate the template in the future.

Do you see a spelling or grammatical error? Report it [email protected]

Copyright 2024 KTUU. All rights reserved.