Web services

So some interesting results, I seem to be able to make the method work for a system role but not for a user level role.  This seems like a new issue since we moved to Moodle 3.7.   Any ideas?

//This works

foreach($parentidlookup as $thisone)
    {
        // echo "Adding ".$thisone."\n";
        $role['roleid']=10;   //Defines what the parent can access generally. Based on student role
        $role['userid']=$thisone;
        $role['contextlevel']="system";
        $role['contextid']=1;
        array_push($roles,$role);

    }
unset($resp);
try{
    $resp=$clientm->core_role_assign_roles($roles);

}catch(Exception $e){
    echo $e."\n";
}

The above fills $roles with below and works:

array(527) {
  [0]=>
  array(4) {
    ["roleid"]=>
    int(10)
    ["userid"]=>
    int(24844)
    ["contextlevel"]=>
    string(6) "system"
    ["contextid"]=>
    int(1)
  }

//Doesn't flag error but doesn't work either.  Confirmed that the $role parameters are correct by browsing database
unset($roles);
unset($role);
unset($resp);
$roles=array();
foreach($parentstudent as $thiskid)
    {
        $role['roleid']=9;  //A user level role assigning a parent to student.
        $role['userid']=$parentidlookup[$thiskid['parent']]; //Recover Parent's moodle userid
        $instanceid=$moodlelookup[$thiskid['student']]; //Recover Student's moodle userid
        $thisid=$context_lookup[array_search($instanceid,array_column($context_lookup,1))][0];
        echo "Found ".$instanceid." with contextid=".$thisid."\n";
        $role['contextid']=(int)$thisid;
        $role['instanceid']=(int)$instanceid;
        $role['contextlevel']='user';
        array_push($roles,$role);
    }

unset($resp);
try{
    $resp=$clientm->core_role_assign_roles($roles);
}catch(Exception $e){
    echo $e."\n";
    }
var_dump($resp);

The above fills $roles with below and doesn't work. Here userid is parent, instanceid is student and contextid is the context that matches instanceid.

array(534) {
  [0]=>
  array(5) {
    ["roleid"]=>
    int(9)
    ["userid"]=>
    int(37393)
    ["contextid"]=>
    int(36887)
    ["instanceid"]=>
    int(19846)
    ["contextlevel"]=>
    string(4) "user"
  }