A friend in the post office? Rainier report cards fail to arrive
Monday, February 20, 2006 6:38 AM PST
By Janine Manny
Printable version
E-mail this articleRAINIER -- If you are missing your kid's report card, the problem might lie in your post office box, not your child's quick action to intercept failing grades.
The Rainier School District has been receiving dozens of progress reports and report cards back in the mail since the beginning of the school year. The mail is being returned as undeliverable to some post office boxes, and school officials have found out that report cards were simply thrown away as undeliverable mail in previous years, when they were sent as bulk mail.
Part of it has to do with stepped-up security in the post Sept. 11 world. Part of it is due to people not filling out the post office rental application fully.
Last April, new Rainier Postmaster Willie Thayer discovered that the district for years been sending out report cards as bulk mail. Bulk mail rates are much cheaper -- 14 cents, as opposed to 39 cents for regular mail -- because if it is undeliverable, it just gets tossed instead of returned.
Report cards don't meet the rules for bulk mail, Thayer said, because each item must be identical.
With report cards, "each one is different and contains personal information, such as social security numbers," Thayer said. "They're like bank statements. Each one is different and contains information including account numbers. We don't want mail like that to be in a Dumpster where people could rummage through it."
Changing to first-class mail is costing the school district an additional $1,200 a year in postage, according to school counselor Jay Davies.
But the additional cost is only part of the problem, Davies said.
Because first class mail is returned if it is undeliverable, the school began getting some of the report cards back that were addressed to local P.O. boxes.
The envelopes are addressed, "To the parent or guardian of ..." and the student's name. Unknown to Davies, if a child's name is not on the application form for a post office box, the mail doesn't get delivered.
At first, the district didn't think much about getting a few report cards back, but Davies grew increasingly frustrated this year after checking addresses with parents, only to get the report cards back again. After a slew of Jan. 30 report cards came back, he went down to the post office for an explanation.
That's when he learned of the addressing problem -- and also realized that until the school switched to returnable first-class mail last year, the undeliverable report cards were getting tossed into the trash with each mailing.
He's urging parents to take steps to solve the problem.
"We want parents to know that if they use a P.O. box, they have to add kids' names on the application form so they can get mail from the school," Davies said. "This is driving us crazy. We mail it and it doesn't get there. This would have been nice to know a couple of years ago."
Thayer said the box application form clearly states that each person who will be getting mail must be listed on the form.
Adults must show picture identification, such as a driver's license, to rent a box. Minors can simply be listed by name and age.
In an attempt to help solve the problem, postal employees have been putting an update form into a box if they see there is mail that can't be delivered.
"We're trying to work with customers as much as possible," Thayer said. "But most people don't fill out the update forms, so we have to assume that the mail doesn't belong to that box number."
There are security reasons that postal service employees can't put mail into box unless the name is specifically listed.
The Postal Service is trying to avoid illegal activities conducted by people using aliases and cases of identity theft.
"This has always been a rule, we're just enforcing it now," Thayer said. "I know Rainier is a small town, but security has tightened up. One of the thing the U.S. Postal Service is focusing on is uniformity, so all post offices do things the same way. Some of the things that were overlooked in the past aren't now. We just can't."
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