Communication Improvement Meeting

May 23, 2005

Attendance: Gary Clark, Susie Self, Mary Vinnedge, Sherri Nelson Mary Halter and Janet Marsh

Communication: The visiting committee commends the school's efforts in providing information to the stakeholders via technology and the Education Specialists and recommends that the school evaluate the effectiveness of and continue to improve the existing communication system so that all stakeholders will have equal and timely access to information.

List Serve

Janet presented options for improvement of out list serve. It was decided that we would not do a chat room at this time. Janet will work with Jenni Retzloff to set up list serves by counties with each county having its own calendar. The list serves and calendars will need a moderator. The list serve and the calendar will have a disclaimer stating that the items posted or sent are not sent by or approved by the school.

At the August ES training meeting ES will be told how to use the return receipt option for emails sent to parents by the ES. This will become mandatory for all emails that are sent to parents as directed by the school.

Phone Service

Mary did some research on the possibility of creating a school phone line sort of like the advisor line where you dial one number that gives you several options. This could be of benefit to the sites when they are trying to help parents get to the right person or find information. Sherri and John Wilberger discussed this and John is researching the possibility and will get back to Sherri.

Susie will send some phone protocol information to Mary Vinnedge. She hesitated to send what she has as it will need quite a bit of editing for it to be appropriate for the sites and she wanted to get more information about the phone systems at the sites. Sherri said to send what she has and they will edit and do training for various office staff in August.

It was decided to wait before researching any further, the idea of an automated phone message system that calls parents and leaves recorded messages.

Forms Online

Gary gave a report about forms online and the cost for acquiring a service. He will also look into the possibility of Filemaker forms that could be accessed online. He hesitates to do much work in Filemaker 6 since they will be moving to Filemaker 7 and much of the development would have to be redone.

Gary will make a field for Ess to make changes to the address information of their parents and themselves. This field will be assessable to Student Records and Personnel to make changes in the actual records.