With school safety in the forefront of everyone’s mind these days, the South Colonie Central School District is taking one more step to ensure its children and families are protected.
In February, the district will launch a new emergency alert information system that will automatically notify parents and guardians by telephone or text message in the event of an unforeseen school closing, early dismissal, evacuation or other unexpected event.
The new computerized telephone system will not replace, but compliment, other notification methods parents have become accustomed to over the years, like radio and television announcements and postings on the South Colonie Web site. The telephone message will add a new dimension to emergency notifications because it will be quicker and more personal.
Not everyone has instant access to a computer, radio or TV during the work day, said Superintendent Michael Marcelle, `so this will give us one more avenue to ensure we reach parents in the unlikely event of an emergency.
Timely communication is the key because the last thing we want is for a young student to arrive home to an empty house.`
Over the years, many South Colonie schools have used a volunteer PTA `phone tree` as a backup to media and web emergency notifications. The phone trees rely on parents to call other parents to spread important information.
Although the phone trees have been systematically structured to make them as reliable as possible, `there are many pitfalls,` said Roessleville PTA President Denise Platt. `Some test runs have revealed a very low success rate in contacting people in a timely manner.`
In the case of an emergency, it is estimated that most children arrive home within 30 to 45 minutes. During two PTA phone tree test runs at Roessleville this school year, a good number of the phone tree callers were not able to be reached, forcing other parents to make many more calls than expected. As a result, it took three hours before every parent could be contacted.
`That’s just too long when you’re talking about a child’s safety,` Platt said.
The South Colonie Safe Schools Committee has spent the better part of a year investigating and listening to proposals from telephone emergency alert service providers to secure the best features and price for the district.
They chose a service called Virtual Ed Link. This service was developed by Viyya Technologies last year in the wake of the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech University. It is a computer application that provides timely distribution of information at any time, but especially in times of crisis.
Here’s how the system works:
Phone numbers parents have supplied to their child’s school for their home, mobile phones, PDAs and emergency contacts are stored in a database.
When an emergency message is disseminated from the district office or remote location, the system automatically calls the parent’s primary contact number.
If no one answers at that number, the message bounces to a second contact number, to a third and so on until someone is reached.
If no one can be reached, it alerts the district so that the school is aware of the situation and a child is not sent home unattended until a parent, guardian or emergency contact can be notified.
`So it’s extremely important that all parents know their child’s emergency contact information is up to date for this system to be truly effective,` Marcelle said. `Parents should also know that their phone numbers will be kept confidential (not shared with outside companies or agencies) and used exclusively for emergency notifications.`
In addition to making emergency announcements, the district can use the telephone alert system to send out information on such things as PTA events, budget votes, student testing reminders and parent-teacher conferences.
The district plans on testing out the new emergency alert system in February. After that, it will work out any bugs and continually refine the system so that it is effective as possible in the event of a real emergency.“
