Education

Email from Chicago Public Schools sends parents to adult website

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A Chicago Public Schools administrator sent parents an email Thursday that mistakenly included a link to an erotic website dedicated to the exploration of women’s sex lives.

The mistake stemmed from a typo in a Web address, reports CBS Chicago.

The email told parents about the statewide implementation of scoring changes for the Illinois Standards Achievement Test. The link was supposed to take parents to information on common core standards from the Illinois State Board of Education website at ISBE.net.

Instead, thanks to an extra character, the link took parents to a women-only, by-invite website called ISBEL.net, an “intimacy destination for modern women,” according to founder and CEO Dominique Gagnon. The site’s home page features an unmade bed in an elegant, modern-looking bedroom. A copy of the Kama Sutra lays open in the sheets.

“Oops, someone has been naughty,” reads a message that now greets Web surfers who come to the site from the Chicago Public Schools email. “Thank you, CPS, for introducing Illinois mothers to Isbel.”

“Isbel is not a porn site or a sex store,” said Gagnon in a press release. She describes it as an “extremely innovative” information portal, “formed to help women understand and appreciate their sexual and sensual sides through a unique design combination of social community and crowdsourcing.”

Chicago Public Schools acknowledged the error.

“As soon as it was brought to our attention, we sent out an updated letter with a corrected link and apologized for any inconvenience it may have caused,” a CPS spokesperson told CBS Chicago.

“Apologies for the inconvenience!” read the new email, which went out approximately two hours after the first one.

Gagnon and her Isbel team are elated by the mistake, which they say resulted in an onslaught of traffic for the new website.

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