Dist. 219 Student Gmail Accounts Sent ‘Lewd, Racist, Anti-Semitic, Offensive’ Emails

Niles West High School.

Niles Township High School Dist. 219 canceled first-period remote classes Thursday and turned off all student Gmail accounts after someone was able to send offensive emails to student accounts.

Skokie police and Dist. 219 staff are working together to investigate.

“Last evening we learned that someone sent messages and images to all of our students from a D219 email account that contained lewd, racist, anti-Semitic, and patently offensive content. As a district, we condemn these actions and messages,” a message sent to Dist. 219 families through the district’s reverse alert system and posted to its website at 6 a.m. Thursday read. The letter was signed by Dist. 219 Supt. Steven Isoye, Niles West Principal Karen Ritter and Niles North Principal James Edwards.

District spokesman Jim Szczepaniak said he was not sure if every student received an offensive email and said there were several similar offensive messages that were sent to different groups of students. More than 4,600 students attend Dist. 219 schools. He declined to detail the content of the email messages further than what was described in the letter.

Dist. 219 said as part of its investigation with police, “we have temporarily turned off student access to district email accounts. Student emails will not be accessible for at least 24 hours. Later this morning, they will be instructed to change their passwords.”

District staff held an emergency meeting during first-period to discuss the incident, “So we can respond to this unacceptable event as a school community,” the letter to parents said.  

“We recognize how upsetting and traumatizing this message was for our school community. We are sorry for any harm this incident has caused. Our Student Services teams will be working directly with our students on Thursday to help them process their reactions,” the letter continued.

Szczepaniak said remote classes continued with the second period where teachers and social workers were able to discuss the emails.