After a few days of sunny Spring weather, we're getting the April Showers. Took a day off just to do a few things around the house. (Mainly, get the molding around the upstairs bedroom off the walls so we can get the last of the ugly wallpaper off.) And tonight, a new episode of LOST. We've also been watching DVDs of Freaks and Geeks. We have one last episode of that to watch. That show was so cool, pity it didn't even last a season.
As I'm typing this I got a recorded message from Minneapolis Public Schools about an event at school. I'm really starting to hate these reminders. I much rather get an email about these than have to sit through a recorded phone message. Are they worried I won't read the email? Then they should know that I've been hanging up on the recorded message after the first 2 seconds. I much rather have a place to choose my preference (phone or email)--but I know of no such option on the Minneapolis system.
Oh, well. Back to my mental preparations for LOST. Ommmmm!
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Everything we want to tell you about the Gennaulas (...and more)!
Twitter Updates
About Me
Things I've found on the web
Tag Cloud
Labels
- 35W bridge (7)
- article (8)
- autism (4)
- book (6)
- Chris (41)
- Chris week review (5)
- dictionary (1)
- family (15)
- fortune cookie (1)
- fringe (10)
- geek (6)
- haiku (4)
- house (2)
- humor (8)
- Life is good (21)
- link (9)
- movie (10)
- music (11)
- politics (5)
- quote (1)
- review (23)
- theater (1)
- today (22)
- Tommy (2)
- Topic of the week (2)
- Wendy (7)
(c) 2006-17 Chris Gennaula, all rights reserved.
Networked Blogs
| Blog: |
| Gennaulapedia |
Topics: |
4 comments:
A link to this blog was forwarded to my attention at North Community High School. We are considering your suggestion as we develop communication policies regarding the use of the automatic phone calling technology for the 2008-09 school year and beyond. We have been using this technology for the past two years and have found it helpful for informing our parents about upcoming events--especially conferences. It is also very helpful for communicating with families who do not speak English when we target messages to the phone numbers of those families. We do our best to collect e-mail addresses for parent contact purposes, but find that we reach more people by phone and mail. Brian Vats-Fournier, Academic Coordinator, North Community High School
It's good to hear that a way of stating a preference for either email or phone message is being considered. My children do not go to North Community High School, but I would hope such a policy would be district wide.
I understand that for some families email is definitely not the right choice. However both my wife and I read the hard-copy school newsletters that come home each week, so we normally know about such events as a school carnival. (The subject of last night's phone message.) This was the 2nd phone message we had received about this particular event. Since we already knew about it and it was the 2nd message, the school phone message becomes like those telemarketing phone calls that we try to avoid. These messages also come around dinnertime--which makes them espeically annoying.
Since you mention that a policy is being considered, I assume there is no current way to request emails only. In case there is I am going to contact our school and see if we can stop these phone calls.
Are you receiving calls for North Community High School despite having no children in your home who attend North? It is certainly possible for you to be removed from the phone lists that are used, sending texts of the phone messages at the same time as the production of the phone messages would be a simple process. The thing that needs to be considered is: when a parent "opts-out" of phone messages can we only agree to do so if and only if the parent provides us with a confirmed e-mail address? There are important messages that we should (and in the case of Federal, State, or District mandates sometimes must) communicate to all parents: absence / truancy notices are one example. This is probably why telemarketers can be forced to adhere to the National Do Not Call List, while public entities such as schools are not.
Brian Vats-Fournier, Academic Coordinator
I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding here. The calls we receive are not from North Community High School. The calls are from the Minneapolis Public school that my children attend.
Also, I think there is a distinction between calls regarding a school carnival and calls regarding attendance issues (especially an on-going issue with attendance). A reminder about a carnival for me is best left as an email. If my child was having attendance issues, what I want is a person-to-person call saying there is an issue that needs to be resolved.
Of course I am giving answers regarding these situations from my point of view. I don't doubt other parents would have different points of view. It is just if an electronic system is going to be put in place I'd like to be able to give a preference as to how that system is going to communicate with me.
Thanks for your comments about this issue.
Post a Comment