This sounds like a HUGE safety issue that needs to be addressed higher up, I mean what makes your principal think that the PTO should be reliable for this. This should not be a issue that the pto should be paying, this is a HIGHER up issue. Take it to your super, your board....dont let your principal push you around on this someone could get seriously hurt!

I would definitely say go to the BOE and possibly go to the Fire Commisoner. This is defintiely a safety issue for the students and should cleared up immediately. In NYS all fire alarms go directly to the fire house and they come right away. We have to notify them when we do our fire drills so they are aware ahead of time. This should definitely not be coming out of the PTO budget thats why parents pay taxes for their children to be safe.

Good Luck

Let us know what happens.

Cindy

Last school yr. my then 3 yr. old pulled the alarm while waiting for my middle schooler & this happened just before school got out. The office went into action as the school had to be evacuated. They had to reset the alarms but in the mean time call the fire dept. & tell them false alarm. The principal said, well we needed an unannounced fire drill anyway. Then they wondered how the fire trucks would have got through all the cars that were there to pick up kids. Anyway I thought all school fire alarms automatically went to the fire dept. This would be a district issue,not pto. Good luck!!!!!

Hi! This should be brought to the attention of your Board of Ed immediately. Clearly they do not have their system set up properly and this is 100% their responsibility. God forbid if something were really to go wrong and there was really a fire and the fire department did not show up, your school could and would be sued by the parents. Your superintendent and BOE need to address and fix this problem immediately. I am curious as to how the fire department even passed the schools inspection if their alarms are not set properly?

This is a pre-k – 5th grade elementary school that has roughly 800 students. The school district itself has 4 high schools, 4 middle schools, 2 intermediate schools, 16 elementary schools, 1 alternative school and 1 special purpose school. I’m not sure of the number of students in the district, or how to classify the size of the district, but it’s not what I consider a small school district. The district’s website is www.clevelandcountyschools.org/, but it’s not that helpful, to me, to assess the size of the district.

About getting a quick response from the fire department, I just assumed that was the case. Come to find out, if you don’t notify the fire department about a fire, then they don’t know about it. It was only brought to our attention because of a parent, that is a fireman, complained, to the principal, that his son told him about the fire alarm incident, and he and the fire department, was unaware of the incident. The principal told him to request PTO to pay for it because it wasn’t in her budget, and the county or state didn’t pay for it. I’m wondering why the school district, county, or state doesn’t pay for this, or if the principal just wants PTO to pay for this instead of taking it out of her budget. I tabled the issue until next month’s meeting to look into this. My plan is to spend the next week calling some of the other schools in the district to see how they pay for this before going to the school board, or higher up.

I just find this really disturbing, as a parent with kids in the school, to find out if there was a fire that the proper personal wouldn’t be notified. YES! What a scary thought.

Is this a small school district? I always thought that by it being a school period that the fire department would respond quickly. The district should be paying for that not the parent organization. What if you didn't raise enough money then how would that be paid for. That is a huge safety issue and a scary thought.