Moanalua students will lose access to their “school” Gmail accounts this Friday as part of the Department of Education’s efforts to have everyone using the same communication system. Students still using their “moanaluahs.k12.hi.us” accounts need to stop and log in using their state Gmail account instead, IT Technology Team member RaDonna Johnson said.

Johnson said teachers had contacted her about students not being able to view or submit assignments, which helped her realize that some students were still using the school account.  In checking log-in data on Monday, Oct. 16, Johnson discovered that more than 18 students were still using the soon-to-be-suspended Moanalua account, “and that was just the letter A,” she said. 

Come next Monday, students will no longer be able to access email and, more importantly, documents in the Moanalua Drive. 

Students were told last spring about the closing of the school accounts, and CAP teachers this year distributed letters informing students about the switch over. A warning was sent during the October break to all students reminding them about the account suspension, but the vast majority of students who are already using the state accounts did not see it. The biggest concern for students who do not move their work out of the school system, according to Johnson, is if they  later realize they need to see work from a previous school year and then realize there is no longer a way to retrieve them. 

“We’re not going to delete the account just yet,” Johnson said. “But students will not be able to access their accounts next week.”

Students should use the next few days to download and move their documents to the state Drive account, Johnson said. She is also offering tutorial sessions Oct. 18, 23 and 25 after school in the Cybrary to help students learn how to migrate the documents. Students can see Johnson to sign up.  The school will use Google Takeout to facilitate the document transfers.