Somers schools start alert system

Northwest Montana News Network

Bring it on, winter.

This year, if blizzards, ice and drifted snow force schools in the Somers School District to close their doors for a day or two, families can find out about the closure before they venture onto the hazardous highways.

The district has adopted the AlertNow Notification Service, which allows Superintendent Teri Wing to contact every household in the district with a single phone call. Smith Valley School plans to implement the program this year as well.

The AlertNow Service will, Wing said, be a highly efficient way to notify families of weather-related closures and school emergencies.

"The ability to get information to you about snow-day closings through the radio has not been as effective as we would like," she said in an Aug. 31 letter to parents.

Wing said before school started that districts can't expect every parent to listen to the radio in the morning in hopes of hearing about a closure.

"We were frustrated last year with glitches in the system about school closures," Wing said.

00020000062800000440622,Some parents didn't find out about a closure in time and arrived at school only to find the doors locked.

Others heard about a closure one day but didn't find out the next day that schools had been reopened, so students were needlessly absent.

Now, according to the letter to parents, Wing will call parents before 7 a.m. if school will be closed. Parents have submitted their primary phone numbers to the school to be plugged into the AlertNow system.

When Wing calls, the system will dial all the numbers recorded. The school's main number will show up on the caller ID display.

If there is a "dire emergency," according to the letter, "411" will be displayed in caller ID.

Parents are asked to notify the district immediately if their phone numbers change during the school year.

Four people in the district have been trained in the AlertNow system: Wing, Somers Middle School Principal Lori Schieffer, Lakeside Elementary School Principal John Thies and Lakeside technology coordinator Casey Love.

They know the system works, Wing said, because they tested it during training.

"Lori Schieffer sent a message to all four of us, and all four of our cell phones rang at the same time," she said.

Wing said she hopes other districts might use AlertNow. A district's size doesn't matter, she said; some large districts have used it successfully.

AlertNow is relatively inexpensive, she added.

"We're paying $2 a student," she said. "It's pretty reasonable."

For more information about the AlertNow system, call the district office at 857-3661.