The company responsible for B.C.'s much-maligned MyEducationBC student information system admitted it had "performance issues" and apologized to School District 57 for the inconvenience.
Karen Wong, president of CUPE 3742, said she had been asking the school board to make the October email public for months.
She said the letter was proof that the vendor, Fujitsu Consulting (Canada) Inc., had failed to meet its obligation to B.C. schools.
"If someone doesn't meet contractual commitments, there's usually a compensation... Where's your compensation?" Wong asked.
The district took money out of children's education, she argued, given it was on the hook for the many hours of overtime by staff.
"That overtime, that should not be coming out of this district's pockets."
School District 57 included the email, dated Oct. 29, 2015, in its public handbook for Tuesday's meeting.
"Recently the incremental load on the system created by the additional 236,213 students across 894 schools has caused performance issues," said the email, signed by Alex Attal, executive vice president for Fujitsu America.
"These, in turn have caused inconvenience, frustration and lost time for many users. We deeply regret this and sincerely apologize."
Attal reiterated the province's vision, saying it takes its role very seriously and "are fully committed to seeing the program succeed" but also acknowledges "the concerns with the new MyEducationBC system, which supports the critical day-to-day operations of your board's choice."
The letter came a month after Wong aired the CUPE worker's concerns for the $95 million data management system. It replaced BCeSIS, a system that was also roundly criticized and plagued school workers with start-up problems.
In October, Attal said Fujitsu and its application partner (Follett) were working hard to optimize the system's performance.
"Although considerable progress has been made, we acknowledge that more effort on our part is required to meet the standards of our contractual commitments and also provide users with an exceptional experience."
"You have our sincere and unwavering commitment, from our project teams to the senior-most leaders at Fujitsu, to achieve positive, expeditious outcome."
Wong thanked the board for making the letter public, but criticized them for months of failed responses. She asked that they continue to keep the issue alive as her members continue to field problems.
"This is not the end of it," Wong said.
"I'm very sorry this letter took so long to get in the board book but it does hopefully address some of the issues that you brought forward," chairperson Tony Cable told Wong.
