New Email System An Obstacle to Student-Teacher Communication

At the beginning of this year, the school switched its email system from its own cambridgehs.org to the county-wide fcsgaonline.org to simplify the management of its emails.

However, complications with the new domain have arisen.

Strapped with many restrictions, the new email system has hampered communication between students and teachers.

The fcsgaonline system is barred from sending emails to or receiving them from accounts from other domains, (such as fultonschools.org), which many teachers still use as their main email account.

“I was trying to email Mr. Funderburk, and he didn’t get any of the emails. I emailed both the fcsgaonline and the fultonschools, and he never said anything about it,” said junior Kristin Keith. “Because apparently, you can’t talk to teachers, I don’t know. We have all those different emails, and you can only email certain people.”

Keith’s teacher, Audio Video Tech and Film instructor Hal Funderburk, agreed that this poses a problem.

“We went about three days without knowing our emails weren’t going through,” said Funderburk.

Funderburk’s classes rely heavily on collaborative technology to produce videos, and they have faced unique problems with “fcsgaonline.” For example, the YouTube account on “fcsgaonline” cannot be accessed for broadcasting “The Bridge,” and sharing assignments and scripts on Google Drive does not always work.

“Yeah, it’s funny that it’s just we get all this technology dumped on us and available to use, but so many restrictions make it almost impossible to integrate,” said Funderburk.

“You can’t give us a little red bicycle and take off the wheels and still call it a bicycle,” he said.

Cambridge Law and Justice Program Instructor Thomas Washburn also used a metaphor to express his own share of troubles with the new email domain.

“It’s like a multi-use screwdriver, and it just gave us the handle,” said Washburn.

Fulton County Schools did not respond to emails or a voice message requesting a comment for this story.

Washburn said the best solution is to not use the email at all, at least for him.

“What’s sad is Google is a collaborative platform,” Washburn said, adding that Fulton County Schools has “stripped all of the collaborative aspects of it.”

The law and justice classes utilize digital worksheets all of the time and have encountered repeated issues with sharing and submitting assignments.

Washburn said he and school administrators have been in constant contact with the county. He said it’s frustrating because the county never communicated any of the email system’s restrictions with the school.

“From my experience so far, with the feedback that I’ve gotten, is that this is what they [Fulton County] planned, which is why I went to the step of taking my kids off of the platform,” said Washburn.

Funderburk and Washburn said they believe the email restrictions were an overreaction to concerns about safety.

“They’re trying to solve a problem before it becomes one,” said Funderburk.

Teachers and students alike hope the trouble with the new email domain is dissolved.

“I can’t say [the email switch] was a bad thing; there’s gonna be issues any time you roll something out,” said Funderburk. “Hopefully there are people working on it, trying to make it user-friendly.”