C. Brooks: A school resource officer is just the police officer assigned to a certain school; our town only has 1 public school and 1 Catholic school, so he splits his time between the 2. Right now he is also covering for a crossing guard who is in the hospital. Having the same officer all the time means he gets to know the kids and they get to know him; I know he is also contacted whenever the police are called to a student's home or for any problem involving a student. Sometimes a familiar face is what they need to see, sometimes having an officer there who knows them means they know they can't BS the other officers.
We do a similar thing. Each class has two home roommothers/fathers. They split up the phone list for the class they're assigned and contact each person on the list (we only contact the oldest child to avoid getting 3-4 phone calls re: same thing.) It's a really good way to shrink the communication gap. We also have a 2 roommother chairperson in charge of it all that call and contact the roommothers. It only works as well as your volunteers. This year we have some great chairpeople so we're taking full advantage of them!
One school I read about uses the school's directory as their phone tree. Each family is asked to contact the family listed below them in the directory. If a family is last on the page then they don't have to call anyone that year. This seems like a good system because no one would be asked to make more than one call. Only the person who needs to have the news/information related would have to call the families listed at the top of each page. This could easily be done by a volunteer.
We use the school's phone master, but I have to admit that even I never listen to the automated calls. I figure out who is sending the message and hang up after the first sentence. The phone tree would at least half way assure conversation. Perhaps I will use that in addition to phone master for upcoming events. Thanks!
I've never heard of a device for a school, but I am so sick of automated phone calls. We (KY) are having elections Tuesday and my answering machine has been filled with them. I think a personal phone tree would be great. I would rather hear from another mom or dad and sometimes some major brainstorming and even friendships can develop.
I don't know what a School Resource Officer is but I bet the grant givers do! Congrats flmom!
Our phone tree isn't a device, it's one room parent from each room agreeing to call each parent when there is something they need to know, eg, there is a meeting Thursday night.
Just what the machine is that the office has and how it works I don't know, since, as I said, they don't use it. It's some kind of automatic dialer that calls all the numbers in its database and leaves a prerecorded message.
