Rotolo Middle School class hijacked by called-in threat, racial slur

BATAVIA – As if remote learning wasn't difficult enough, a teacher at Rotolo Middle School in Batavia reported she had just signed in for an e-learning class Nov. 5 when someone outside the district hijacked the class with threats and racial epithets, according to police reports and school officials.

District 101 spokeswoman Holly Deitchman said since remote and e-learning started due to the pandemic, people outside of the district have been able to jump in on some of the virtual e-learning sessions.

“They say very negative, out of character things for elementary, middle school or high school classrooms – but this one escalated,” Deitchman said. “The entire classroom of students and teachers would have heard it. It’s almost like photo bombing in a virtual way.”

Photobombing is when a person, whether intentionally or unintentionally, appears in a photograph of someone else and takes attention off of the intended subject.

Since this call also threatened to kill someone, school officials felt it was necessary to report it to police, she said.

“Someone jumps on – someone you don’t know or who doesn’t belong – and they shout things that are vulgar or very offensive … so they can gain attention and disrupt your classroom," Deitchman said. "And at that age, you can’t wrangle them back into learning, especially after something like that.”

Deitchman said she surmised that the teacher accidentally allowed that caller into the remote classroom, not realizing they didn’t belong.

This has been occurring since e-learning started and it occurs randomly in various classrooms, she said. Deitchman could not say how often it's happened at district schools.

“It just happens. To what end does this get you? You get some attention disrupting a classroom. We’re working with Google to come up with safeguards to make getting into a class more difficult,” Deitchman said, as the district uses a Google Meet platform for remote learning. “It’s virtually starting to roll out right now.”

According to the police report, the threat and racial slur sounded like a robotic voiceover.

Police were able to local a partial telephone number, and did not locate anyone in the Batavia schools with a matching number, the report stated.