CLEARFIELD – Although it’s not typical procedure for its committee meetings, the Clearfield school board listened to one parent’s concerns about the lack of communication from the district and school safety.
Jennifer Campolong of Clearfield was primarily concerned with procedures at the Clearfield Area Elementary School. Her concerns, communication and safety, go “hand-in-hand,” she said.
First, she called attention to the transportation problems on the first day of school. She said the next day Principal Mary Michael Sayers was kind enough to speak with her.
However, she said there were many parents with concerns and Sayers doesn’t have enough time to address them all on an individual basis. She asked why the district couldn’t better utilize its Web site or send out a mass telephone alert.
According to Campolong, parents from other school districts get alerts on both their cellular phones as well as their landlines at home. She said parents would appreciate getting alerts about delays in school bus transportation and “risky behavior” in the schools.
“We’re hearing too much from our kids and not enough from the school,” she said. On the topic of school safety, Campolong said she’d reviewed the student handbook but couldn’t find an emergency plan for parents to reference.
She said parents need to know where they should pick up their children if an emergency situation would occur at the schools. She said it was “critical information” that needed to be communicated in a timely manner to parents.
Superintendent Terry Struble said Campolong hit a lot of concerns that the district worked to address before school started and over the past few weeks. He said the district anticipated transportation issues with converting its elementary school into a K-6 campus.
“We knew we’d have issues with the line of parent pick-ups and 26 school busses trying to get in and out,” he said. “On the first day, we had our best plan and it was a chronic failure. It seems to work a little better every day.”
On the first day, Struble said the district debated a mass message to parents about the transportation problems. However, he noted it was experiencing issues with the alert system and wasn’t sure all parents would receive the message.
“We didn’t want to create more confusion,” he said. The district, he said, is currently exploring methods of communicating important messages to parents via its Web site. He said it’s also considering the development of a Facebook page.
So far as the emergency response plan, Struble said one isn’t communicated to parents in the student handbooks, as this is something that varies from situation-to-situation. He promised Campolong that the district has been “dreaming up” all of the possible worst case scenarios and preparing in case one would occur at one of its schools.
Campolong asked Struble when parents could expect to start receiving updates from the district via the Web site and Facebook. Struble explained that with new staff in positions, they are all learning things, such as Web site updates.
“We are trying,” he said.
