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Pennsylvania School District Has New Way to Alert Parents in Emergency

Posted on: Friday, 29 July 2005, 18:00 CDT

Jul. 29--Starting this fall, the Bald Eagle Area School District will implement a rapid-response notification system that will alert parents, staff, teachers and students to any emergency or unexpected change in the school day with a single phone call.

The Saf-T-Net AlertNow service can make 6,000 phone calls per minute and deliver 30- to 45-second announcements.

To activate the system, administrators call one of Saf-T-Net's emergency support centers and record a message. That message will then be sent to all the phone numbers in the system within a matter of minutes.

Superintendent Dan Fisher said the program, which will cost about $6,000 per year, was implemented to keep the district's transportation system, and its students, safe.

The district encompasses 342.6 square miles, making it, geographically, one of the largest districts in the state.

With many students living in rural areas, Fisher said, it is important to make sure early-dismissal or class-cancellation notices make it to parents in a timely fashion.

"It's important for parents to know if their students will be arriving home sooner than expected," he said. "A lot of our students are disengaged from buses in areas where parents would want to pick their students up or have someone pick them up."

The system also could help the district to avoid canceling school when it doesn't need to and to more quickly make the decision to cancel or dismiss classes.

"If we can get the message out in five minutes, in a marginal situation, that could make a difference," he said. "It gives us time to make those decisions, to see which way the weather goes."

The school will continue to announce any closings, delays or emergencies on local TV and radio stations.

Bald Eagle Area appears to be the only district in Centre County with such a program. Some districts, such as Bellefonte Area and State College Area, have discussed the possibility of acquiring a similar service but have taken no action.

Since 2003, Centre County's Office of Emergency Communications has had a similar system, called Code Red, that allows the county to either map an area or create a list of specific phone numbers to dial in the event of an emergency.

To date, it has not been deployed in an actual emergency, according to Dan Tancibok, the county's director of 911 Emergency Communications, although last year it erroneously sent a message about two robberies to some State College-area residents.

The county, with the Centre Region Council of Governments, pays $9,500 a year for service and minutes.

In nearby Blair County, the Tyrone Area School District implemented AlertNow a year and a half ago. Officials there deem it a great success.

"We like it very much," said Cathy Peachey, business administrator for the district. "It's very cost-effective and does do the job of letting parents know quickly."

Peachey said the district has deployed the system, which costs it about 17 cents per call, about five times since it went online. All of those calls were to inform parents of early dismissals due to weather conditions.

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Copyright (c) 2005, The Centre Daily Times, State College, Pa.

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Source: Centre Daily Times (State College, Pa.)

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