Unbeknownst to them, some South Whidbey parents may not be getting phone calls from the school district.

It wasn’t until he received an email from a teacher that Todd Williams learned that his 8-year-old daughter was sick and needed to be picked up from school. But despite the school’s numerous efforts to reach him telephonically from its landline phone, Williams’s cell never buzzed, and he found no missed calls or voicemails.

This has been a recurring issue this school year, Williams said. In multiple instances, South Whidbey Elementary School Principal Susie Richards tried to call him to let him know his son was in her office, but to no avail.

“My phone never indicates there’s a call coming,” he said.

Suspecting the issue was affecting calls made from landlines, Williams asked five different landline users to give him a call. Only one went through, he said. And instead of hearing his personalized voicemail greeting, the callers heard an automated voice.

Whatever messages were left, they did not make it to Williams’ voicemail box, but somewhere else, he said.

To Williams, the district’s inability to reliably contact parents is not only an inconvenience, but a safety issue. After inquiring with a few businesses on the South End, he believes the issue doesn’t just affect the schools.

On Nov. 15, he brought his concerns to Director of Operations Scott Peacock, who said is familiar with the situation and that it has been a source of frustration to the schools and the families.

In an interview, Peacock said he doesn’t know when the issue started, nor if there are buildings that are more affected than others. While the district hasn’t received many complaints from parents, a number of whom are likely not aware there is an issue at all, Peacock assumes many families haven’t received the schools’ calls and voicemails.

However, he clarified, the issue doesn’t affect Parent Square, a system that notifies parents in the scenario of an emergency and that uses different routing and phone providers.

The schools are not responsible for the connectivity troubles, and with only one technician, they lack the capacity and resources to make any improvements.

The district has been in touch with Whidbey Telecom (which provides phone services to the district) and other providers in an effort to address these challenges, Peacock said.

Whidbey Telecom CEO George Henny said the issue was not caused by Whidbey Telecom but from one or more third party carriers. Upstream carriers — which connect smaller providers like Whidbey Telecom to broader networks — can choose to route calls through cheaper and less reliable carriers, which is what may have caused the connectivity issue experienced by the district, he explained.

Henny couldn’t disclose what plans have been shared with the district due to regulations protecting customer privacy. He also couldn’t disclose what businesses are customers of Whidbey Telecom. When asked about Whidbey Telecom and other providers’ plans to address the problem, Peacock wrote in an email that he could not speak for those companies regarding what they are or are not doing.

However, Henny recommends clients who believe their calls are not getting to people to reach out to Whidbey Telecom Tech Support within 24 hours of the incident, providing the sending number, the receiving number and the time and date the call was made.

That is because the upstream telephone providers “flush” their call records every 24 hours, Henny said, so they need to act fast to retrieve any information.

The company, Henny said, can’t do much about the problem if the call is made to a phone outside of its network.

If the problem is reported before this short deadline, Whidbey Telecom can work with the other network to investigate and address the problem on a case by case basis but cannot adopt a one-time fix for all numbers in the company’s network, he said.

In an email sent Wednesday afternoon, Peacock said the district has been experiencing better connectivity when calling external numbers in recent days.

Whidbey Telecom’s Technical Support team can be reached at 800-880-0886.