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Keeping county parents informed |
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Bland County
Messenger
http://www.swvatoday.com/comments/keeping_county_parents_informed/news/2947/Jeffrey
Simmons
Tue Jun 24, 2008
By NATE HUBBARD/Staff
Nine hundred phone calls in
less than a minute?
Not even the best teenage gabbers can top that.
On Thursday night, the Bland County School Board approved the purchase of a
telephone alert system that can relay voice messages to all parents of
school-age children in the county almost instantly after an administrator
clicks “send.”
The AlertNow system, provided by Saf-T-Net out of Raleigh, N.C.,
will cost the school division $2,700 annually, or about $3 per student.
“The cost is the cheapest of the people we have talked to and it looks very
user-friendly,” said Superintendent Don Hodock.
Online training for school officials in the intricacies of the system is
included in the yearly fee.
Starting with the upcoming 2008-09 school year, parents will provide the
schools with a contact number for the system to call. Once the list of numbers
is compiled, Hodock or another school administrator only needs to create a
message and input it in the system for it to be disseminated to phones across
the county.
According to AlertNow promotional materials, the system can send up to 6,000
calls per minute.
The drive to purchase an alert system gained momentum in March after
administrators instituted a lockdown at Bland High School
after a gun part was found at the school.
Parents generally were satisfied with the school’s response to the incident,
but felt frustrated by an initial information void that was quickly filled by
rumors that turned out to be much worse than the reality of the situation.
While school officials still will wait to confirm details of a crisis situation
before sending out messages, the AlertNow program should quickly squash any
misinformation once the alert is sent out.
In informational material provided by the company, dealing with emergency
situations is highlighted as a key component of the system.
“[It will] quell rumors by getting out the correct information to parents and
students before things get out of control, preventing mass hysteria,” the
brochure states.
But emergency contacts won’t be the only potential use of the system.
During Thursday’s meeting, Hodock said the system could be used in the case of
an “emergency or altered schedules.”
Testimonials provided by the company from school administrators already using
AlertNow mentioned using the program to publicize school cancellations or
delays and to replace certain fliers or other paper announcements normally sent
home with students.
Messages can even be coded so that routine notifications show up with just the
school’s number on caller ID programs, while emergency alerts display “411” to
emphasize the urgency of certain calls.
After messages are sent, the system also generates a report for school
officials to verify that calls were successfully delivered.
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