District Moves toward Emergency Calling System
In this, the age of instant information, parents want quick and easy access to emergency announcements concerning their school age children and Huntington School District officials are moving forward with a plan to provide it to them.
“We spent some time this summer researching and evaluating systems which enable the district to mass contact our parents and/or our staff via phone calls and e-mails with important messages such as school closings, bomb scares or other types of time sensitive communications,” said David H. Grackin, assistant superintendent for finance and management services, who is heading the project.
Mr. Grackin said that in addition to the emergency communication capabilities, the system could also be deployed on a daily basis for attendance related calling. “The messages can be sent district-wide, from a specific building or buildings and aimed at a whole school, a grade or even a class, athletic team or club,” he said.
The district examined three different systems, including School Messenger, K-12 Alerts and Connect Ed. “Each system performs basically the same function with some slight differences,” Mr. Grackin explained. “We were especially impressed with Connect Ed, which is used by 32 school districts in Suffolk and 19 in Nassau. It interfaces very well with our student information system, E-School Data. Several of our neighboring school districts have used it successfully.”
The cost for the Connect Ed service is expected to run about $23,333 before BOCES state aid. “We can enroll in this service through Eastern Suffolk BOCES and receive some state aid on the service, roughly 50 percent,” Mr. Grackin said.
“Currently, we rely on individual calls being made from school offices and in an emergency we elicit the assistance of PTA members,” Superintendent John J. Finello said. “With the increased dependence on technology, parents expect immediate notification regarding emergency situations.”
District officials hope to have the system up operational sometime during September.
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