Notification system will be welcome
Published 7:21 pm Tuesday, September 15, 2009
By Louise Pitts | Jemison Elementary School
Living in Alabama, where tornadoes and hurricanes affect our weather, it is important to have a school crisis communication plan. Recently, the Chilton County Board of Education entered into a contract with a company to provide immediate notification of emergency situations, such as early dismissal from school, to parents.
This will be a wonderful program and will be very beneficial to parents. However, parents need to make sure that the school has correct, working phone numbers for them. The communication calling system will use a computer to deliver the message. It will not realize that an answering machine has answered and not a person. Therefore, answering machine messages need to be short.
Jemison Elementary School will also be able to use this program to inform parents of special events taking place at the school. We are excited about this new communication program and believe the benefits will far outweigh the expense.
Communication between the school and parents is a major key in providing a safe and appropriate education for the students at Jemison Elementary School. For that reason, all 54 homeroom teachers send newsletters home each Monday. The newsletters are excellent tools in providing much needed information to parents. The newsletters contain homework assignments, important dates to remember, notes of praise and other important information, which enlightens parents for the week. I am very proud of these teachers, who take the time each week to turn out colorful and interesting newsletters as an informative tool for our parents.
Educating children is a team effort. Bus drivers are an indispensible part of the team. I often say that bus drivers have the toughest job in education. They have 72 students on their bus with the bus driver’s back to the students. I am not allowed to put 72 students in a classroom with the teacher standing still looking at them. However, people expect bus drivers to see and hear everything that is happening on the bus while driving 55 miles per hour down the highway, safely delivering students to school or to home. Jemison Elementary School is fortunate to have 24 dedicated and caring bus drivers on staff.
On another grateful note, our coupon book fundraiser was a huge success. We thank everyone who purchased books or who sold them. With the cuts in the education budget, the profits from the sale will be beneficial in financing many school programs, which enhance the academic instruction at Jemison Elementary School.
– Louise Pitts is the principal of Jemison Elementary.
