PA UC weekly filing gives error message for school bus driver - worked for years before
Really frustrated right now! I'm a school bus driver and have been filing for seasonal unemployment during summer breaks for the past 6 years with zero problems. But starting this year (2025), I keep getting an error message every single Sunday when I try to file my weekly claim. The system just boots me out with some vague 'unable to process request' message. I've had to wait until Wednesday the past two weeks to finally get my claim through. Anyone else experiencing this? Is there something new with school employees and UC this year? Getting worried since summer break is my planned unemployment period and I budget for this income.
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Mei Zhang
yeah same here!! been driving bus for highschool 4 years and always file sundays. this month keeps saying error too but mine says 'system temporarily unavailable' then kicks me out. tried diff browsers too nothing works
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Jamal Anderson
•That's exactly what I'm getting! Have you tried calling them? I spent 3 hours on redial yesterday and couldn't get through.
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Liam McGuire
There's definitely something going on with the seasonal education workers in the system. My wife (lunch lady) is having the same problem. Something to do with the new 'verification period' they added for school employees this year.
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Jamal Anderson
•Wait, what new verification period?? This is the first I'm hearing about this! Was there a notice sent out that I missed?
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Amara Eze
•My neighbor works for the school district (not a teacher) and said there was some memo about 'enhanced verification for educational institution employees' starting May 2025. Supposedly they're doing extra checks to make sure people aren't getting paid by the school during summer while also claiming UC. But the system clearly isn't handling it right!
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Giovanni Ricci
This is a known issue affecting educational employees filing in 2025. The PA UC system implemented enhanced verification checks for reasonable assurance documentation from school districts. The system gets overloaded processing these verifications on Sundays (highest filing day). School employees should: 1. Try filing Tuesday-Thursday when the system load is lower 2. Make sure your employer has submitted your reasonable assurance letter to UC 3. Check that your employment category is correctly marked as "educational services" in your profile The system should stabilize by late June once the verification backlog is processed.
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Jamal Anderson
•Thank you for this clear explanation! So frustrating they didn't communicate this change better. Is there any way to check if my school district submitted my reasonable assurance letter? I don't want to suddenly get disqualified.
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NeonNomad
TYPICAL PA UC NONSENSE!! They always roll out these "improvements" that break everything! Same thing happened in 2023 with the ID.me verification disaster. I've been a substitute teacher for 9 years and NEVER had problems until they decided to "fix" things that weren't broken!!! 🤬
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Fatima Al-Hashemi
•ikr? my cousin works for unemployment office (not directly but related department) & said theyre totally swamped with the new education worker verification system. apparently was supposed to be phased in slowly but they rushed it for budget reasons 🙄
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Dylan Mitchell
I was having the exact same issue (also a school bus driver). After spending days trying to get through to someone at PA UC with no luck, I tried Claimyr.com and got connected to an agent in about 20 minutes. The agent confirmed there's a new verification step for school employees and fixed something in my account that was causing the error. They have a video that shows how it works: https://youtu.be/CEPETxZdo9E?si=WL1ZzVZWG3KiHrg2 After they fixed whatever was flagged on my account, I've been able to file on Sundays again with no errors.
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Jamal Anderson
•Thank you for this suggestion! I'll check it out because I really need to get this resolved. Did they say what exactly was flagged on your account?
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Dylan Mitchell
•The agent said there was some flag about "reasonable assurance of continued employment" that needed manual verification. Apparently, the system is supposed to auto-verify this with school districts now, but something in the process is breaking for many of us. Once they manually verified it, the error stopped happening.
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Liam McGuire
Just an update - my wife finally got through to UC yesterday and they said the Sunday system is basically crashing because ALL school employees are trying to file the same day. They recommended filing on Tuesday or Wednesday until they fix the system overload issue.
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Jamal Anderson
•Thanks for the update! I managed to get through to someone using that Claimyr service mentioned above. They confirmed what you said about system overload and also fixed whatever was causing my specific errors. Filed this morning with no problems!
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Amara Eze
I had a completely different issue with my biweekly claims but it turned out to be related to this same education verification thing! My regular job is bus driving but I also did some tutoring this year. The system was getting confused because I had two different types of educational employment and couldn't process it correctly. Had to have someone manually fix my claim type. The whole new verification system is a mess.
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Fatima Al-Hashemi
did anyone get a letter about this??? i swear they never tell us anything important! just random stuff about job search requirements but nothing about major changes that affect our claims!
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Giovanni Ricci
•PA UC did send notices to all claimants who filed with educational employers in 2023-2024, but many people reported not receiving them. The information was also published in the Claimant Newsletter (Spring 2025) and on the PA UC website under "System Updates". Unfortunately, these changes weren't communicated as effectively as they should have been.
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