In under two hours last Friday afternoon, Novembr 6, the Wellsville School District took another step into the 21st Century. They ran a test on a new system to notify families of all district students of any announcements that may come along. It's all done through computers. It's call "One Call".
Using a program called Access automatic calls can be made to the homes of all students. It's accomplished with recorded messages. It can be used for announcements such as snow delays or cancellations. Superintendent Richard Bereschek said the first planned use will be to advise parents of an upcoming H1N1 Clinic to be held either this week or next. Letters have already been sent home with students but the exact date hasn't been set. It'll be conducted with the Columbiana County Health Dept. to administer the swine flu vaccine to students and when the date is set the new telephone notification system will be used.
There was an 82% success rate in the test run last Friday. A total of 1,075 calls were made with 883 completed. There were ten numbers that have been disconnected and 182 that did not go through for various reasons. Most of those were attributed to having a wrong telephone number on file. Each student's home telephone number is recorded into the system. If you did not receive a call last Friday you are asked to contact the school to verify your number.
Mr. Bereschek explained that for snow delays or cancellations the homes of bus students will be called first. Some of those students leave home around 7 A.M. to catch the bus. Other school administrators will be enrolled to get the system activated when the need arises. If Mr. B is out checking road conditions he will call someone to record the message onto the computer and get the notifications started.
The system has been used by the Career Center for sometime now. Mr. B said they are not trying to put News 9 Snowbird out of business. It's a speedier compliment to Snowbird without the wait for the announcement to scroll around again. It only pertains to the Wellsville Schools and can be used for much more than just weather delays or cancellations.
One call does it all...
ole nib
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3 comments:
One thing that would have been nice would have been a note sent home with kids, or some kind of an announcement in the paper regarding this. I had accused my child of skipping school that day, and have since apologized to him, because of the call.
My kids have this system at their school. It is very convenient...almost too convenient! Seems like every other day I get a phone call from the principal or superintendent with an announcement.
I think Mr. B wishes he would have sent a note home before running the test. The flood of return calls almost buried them.
nib
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