Española Middle School administrators have had to resort to some unconventional ways to communicate with teachers and students because the bell and public address system crashed in early April.
The communication system doesn’t work in the half of the building that houses the school’s seventh grade students, which means some students are being marked tardy for going to class late.
The school’s staff relies on watches and wall clocks to let students know when it is time for lunch or to change classes.
Middle School Principal Julie Gutierrez said the school’s staff is aware of the bell situation, so a student would have to be really late, meaning they’d have to report to class well after the three-minute grace period following the “bell,” to be marked tardy.
“We have not been tagging students for being tardy too much,” she said. “To be marked tardy, they would have to be extremely late.”
Gutierrez said for the time being, the office staff uses the school’s telephone intercom system to communicate with teachers. She hopes, in the near future, to identify a universal smart phone application that could be used to send schoolwide alerts.
She said no one in the school administration has told her when they expect the problem to be fixed. District Facilities Director Adán Cordova said he isn’t exactly sure what malfunctioned inside the unit, but he believes the control module may have burnt out.
Middle School Secretary Emma Merritt said she communicates with the staff through Synergy, the school’s student information system that tracks student attendance and grades. The only problem with this form of communication is that the teacher can’t access the message unless the program is open on their computer screen.
The bell and intercom system is for internal communication with teachers and students and its malfunction shouldn’t interfere with school officials notifying parents during an emergency.
“We still have ways to communicate,” she said.
Middle School Assistant Principal Robert Quiñonez said it is imperative the public address system is repaired, so the school can be prepared for any emergency that may arise.
Such an emergency surfaced May 9, 2017, when the National Weather Service issued a tornado warning for the Española area that lasted from 12:59 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
“In the event of an emergency, such as we had last spring with the tornado warning, it was really tough to get people on the same page and moving quickly,” he said. “The P.A. system is a concern of ours.”
Española Superintendent Bobbie Gutierrez said she is aware of the issue and is working with her staff to fix the problem. School officials didn’t commit any resources to repairing the system back in April, because until recently, they didn’t know what they had left in the Senate Bill 9 account.
Public Education Department personnel had to wait until the District accounts were reconciled before they released the SB 9 money.
The SB 9 account is funded through a two-mill levy and was established to help pay for school infrastructure improvements.
Cordova said he doesn’t anticipate the project costing any more than two or three thousand dollars.
Bobbie Gutierrez said she isn’t sure how long the project will take, especially since the purchase orders for any equipment needed to do the work, would have to be approved by the state’s Public Education Department.