Dear WCSU Families:

Re: New PARENT AND COMMUNITY ALERT SYSTEM

At this time of year, schools across Vermont annually dust off their school closing “phone trees” and confirm preparations for storm related school closings. Here at WCSU we are making plans to implement a new electronic school closing system called “Blackboard Connect” that will enable us to broadcast school closings to all registered telephone and cell phones in the district. If your phone number(s) has been given to your WCSU member school as “contact information” you will automatically receive a recorded phone message from me confirming that your school will be closed on any given day that warrants closing. It is advisable that you have both a home phone and cell phone registered at your child's school. You may also have contact numbers for both parents or a guardian. The system can send a message to all those caring for your child. Simply register those numbers with the school. It is also important that you periodically update and/or confirm those contact numbers.

To begin, we will be conducting a test run of all phones in our combined system by Thursday November 3rd. Once this test has taken place, you may notify your local school if you want to remove a number that is in our system or add an additional number that we may not have. If you didn’t receive a test message, please notify your local school by Monday November 7th. We expect this will streamline a process that, in the early morning, can be difficult and improve communications. Should the system work well this winter, we may consider adding opportunity to notify parents and families of other urgent information.

We will keep you posted.

Please also note that traditional broadcasts through the Vermont Broadcasters Association will also be made. This includes the following:
WCAX channel 3
WCVR 102.1
WGXL 92.3
KIXX 100.5
WJJR 98.1
WEBK 105.3

Sincerely,
Alice Worth
Superintendent of Schools
Windsor Central Supervisory Union

    - Submitted: Monday, October 31st by Robert Callahan