NY - Summer school message reaches thousands in error, including a 40-year-old

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NEW YORK (AP) - Mark Spivak was given a warning: attend summer school or risk being held back. Trouble is, Mark is a 40-year-old financial planner who graduated from city public schools 23 years ago.

The warning, received by Spivak's mother, Carol, was one of more than 28,000 errant automated phone calls from Schools Chancellor Harold Levy, said Karen Finney, a spokeswoman for the Board of Education.

"I found it humorous," Carol Spivak told The New York Times for Wednesday's editions. "I told Mark that I had a bone to pick with him and that he had to cancel his plans to play golf this summer to go to summer school."

Not everyone was amused.

Kendall Goodman, a seventh-grader, said after she got a call Friday, she worried the entire weekend that she flubbed the citywide reading and math test.

"I didn't understand how it could happen," the 12-year-old said.

About 12 percent of 237,000 automated calls from Levy were made to invalid, duplicate or outdated phone numbers or to a parent whose child was not in danger of being held back, Finney said

http://www.picayuneitem.com/display/inn_news/20summerschool.txt

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2001


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