What I’m in the mood to discuss this Sunday is the Warren County Schools’ automated phone call system. I loved that system. It was, as they say, the best thing since sliced bread. I remember the old days of getting up and attempting to determine if school had been canceled due to inclement weather before I rousted the children out of bed. It was a real pain.
I always drove my children to school, so I really wanted to know before I went to all the effort of getting my children up out of bed, feeding them breakfast, making sure both had what they needed (including lunch money and their homework) and then driving them to school. It seemed, and really was, a waste of my precious energy if school had been canceled. I could have spent the last two hours enjoying my life – not that I would have, but two hours of extra sleep would have been awesome.
One such morning, I got up and went through the ritual. I never suspected anything was wrong. The weather was nice outside. When I got the children to school, the parking lot was empty and a very nice lady told me school had been canceled because there was an issue with water to the school. As nice as she was, I was extremely irritated by the situation.
I can’t count the number of times I drove my children to school and only then discovered school had been canceled for the day. Along with the irritating cancellations, school would occasionally let out early. Nine times out of 10, I discovered that important piece of information with very little time remaining to get to the school. It was almost always a rush to get there on time.
Just when I thought I couldn’t take much more, the school system established a telephone notification system to let parents know that school was canceled or that the day was being cut short. I made sure I was one of those getting a phone call. It was awesome. If the phone rung early in the morning, I knew it was the school saving me a trip. I answered it and went back to bed.
It didn’t take too long for the school to figure out that the system could be used to remind parents of school-related activities. That’s when it all went wrong for me. It was so irritating that I remember contemplating removing my number from the system because of the unwanted calls. However, the school had me between a rock and a hard place: If I wanted calls regarding cancellation, I had to tolerate all the other unwanted calls.
I think the school should go back to the original intent of the system and that was for emergency notification only, like cancellation of school. If you want to do both emergency notifications and upcoming school-related activities, give parents that option. I would have opted out of the latter. I’m sure many parents would.
Standard reporter Lisa Hobbs can be reached at 473-2191.