On Sunday night, January 26, Marietta Public Schools’ Superintendent Brandi Naylor
received a message from a member of the Board of Education who had gotten several
questions from parents regarding a text message they had received, supposedly from
the school. The text message stated that “MPS” would not be in school on Monday due
to the investigation of a threat.
Because district administrators were not sure who had received the message, they
chose to contact all the district’s parents, students, and staff members to clear up any
possible confusion.
The district’s message stated that a false text was received by some parents notifying
them that there would be no school on Monday due to a perceived threat. The message
went on to say, “That text did not come from the Marietta School District and there has
been no threat reported. We will investigate the origin of this false text and apologize for
any inconvenience.”
Naylor also contacted law enforcement.
“We aren’t sure how many parents received the text and haven’t been able to figure out
anything about where it came from other than it did not come from our system,” Naylor
stated. “We do not have any evidence of a data breach of our system. To be clear, the
text did not say anything about Marietta Public Schools, just MPS.”
There is some speculation that scammers broadcast the message to an unknown
quantity of phone numbers; some parents of Marietta students received it and
mistakenly assumed that the “MPS” referred to in the fraudulent text must have been
Marietta Public Schools.
The investigation into the false text is ongoing.