Opinions on phone policy in public school. - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

kerry · #1 11-05-2010, 10:43 AM

Looking for opinions. My wife works in a public school. Has had a phone in her classroom for years with a direct number to call. This week the school installed new phones. Tried to call her with info about our cat who is in the hospital. Phone goes directly to voice mail. Odd? My wife investigated. Turns out the administration programmed the phones to not accept calls from outside the school during the school day. They didn't tell any teachers about this policy. Also, all voice mails are automatically transcribed into text and sent to my wife's e-mail. Administration has access to all e-mails.
What do people think of this? Any other public school teachers out thee with similar phone policies?

MTI · #2 11-05-2010, 10:47 AM

Isn't this a case of "their phone, their rules?"

jcyuhn · #3 11-05-2010, 10:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MTI

Isn't this a case of "their phone, their rules?"

Yeah, that is pretty much the way it works. It has been established that an employer has access and rights to all email sent and received using their computers and/or network, regardless whether the nature of the email is business or personal. Doesn't seem much of stretch to apply this to a phone system.

If you want direct access and some measure of privacy, get her a cellphone. Then the school cannot block nor monitor your communications.

kerry · #4 11-05-2010, 11:00 AM

Still lots of questions. As an employer, would you institute such a policy without informing your employees? Would you also give some thought to the fact that your employees jobs require that they communicate with people outside the place of employment to fulfill their job duties? For instance, it is an absolute requirement that teachers contact parents under certain circumstances. What would you think if as a parent, the administration had set up a system which made a phone call to your child's teacher virtually impossible?

Kuan · #5 11-05-2010, 11:06 AM

You should be able to call the office for anything urgent. I would have informed everyone involved and solicited feedback before making the decision to implement or not.

lutzTD · #6 11-05-2010, 11:48 AM

im surprised you had the access to call her in the first place. seems like a big opportunity for abuse by a needy spouse or child. Perhaps this is their way of correcting just such a situation. Anyway, as others have mentioned, there is no reason in this day and age not to have a cell. if at least to be able to call for car trouble and whatnots. i agree with the their phone their rules portion of it. A notification might have been nice

Jim B. · #7 11-05-2010, 12:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kerry

Still lots of questions. As an employer, would you institute such a policy without informing your employees? Would you also give some thought to the fact that your employees jobs require that they communicate with people outside the place of employment to fulfill their job duties? For instance, it is an absolute requirement that teachers contact parents under certain circumstances. What would you think if as a parent, the administration had set up a system which made a phone call to your child's teacher virtually impossible?

The system the school chose sounds perfectly fine to me; too bad if they failed to ask all the teachers about it first.

Their ( the teachers) job is to TEACH, in the classroom, all day, NOT to blab on the phone with some student's mother about somebody's sick cat when class is in session.

The cell phone asbuse phenomemon has utterly corrupted our society to the point that a cell phone call is considered a "summons" that MUST be answered immediately, no atter WHO it is from and what it is about.

The excuse about "emergencies" has been expanded so far and to include so much, it is now worthless and meaningless.

There should be a law that ALL faculty must NOT have their cell phones on in class, and the students the same.

And there is NO reason whatsoever for children to have one (Cell phone) on campus. 15 years ago none of them did and things were fine without them.

Violations punished by suspension of teachers or students, multiple violations, by their loss of job (teachers) or by expulsion (students)

BobK · #8 11-05-2010, 12:55 PM

Yes, God forbid the teachers/students be able to call 911 when nut case kid opens up with dad's guns. Or let LE know where the shooter is in the building- this actually happened recently and the cops commented on how helpful it was to them.
We hire ADULTS to run classrooms as teachers. The phone is one usefull tool my wife has in her class. With it she can contact parents when needed to discuss situations involving the child. She can have the student call the parent when needed - great tool when the kid is lying to her about something.
If a you are aware of a teacher spending her day talking to someone about a sick cat instead of teaching, please contact the teachers principal.
Personally, I'd like my wife (a 6th grade teacher) to have a school phone, her own cell phone, a gun, and a local administration and police department who will enforce the law and back her up when some spoiled brat threatens to hurt her.
It is the school systems phones and computer network so yes, they can pretty much do what they want with the system. They can ban personal email and such. There are some rules however on reading personal emails. Generally they are supposed to stop as soon as they realize they are personal. They can discipline the user, but they are not supposed to read any further. It is still a slippery area.

Jim B. · #9 11-05-2010, 01:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BobK

Personally, I'd like my wife (a 6th grade teacher) to have a school phone, her own cell phone, a gun, and a local administration and police department who will enforce the law and back her up when some spoiled brat threatens to hurt her.

So you want to turn the classroom into the OK Corral, and let teachers shoot and kill some child that she thinks is threatening her.

You are unbelievable.

mgburg · #10 11-05-2010, 01:22 PM

Sorry...I just can't understand the reasonings for the priorities we're setting for ourselves anymore...

Gee...how the h3ll did we make it this far in the world before cellphones and PHONES IN THE CLASSROOM?

We used intercoms and some folks even took a message down the damn hallway and handed it to the teacher if it wasn't intended to be BROADCASTED ALL OVER THE SCHOOL OVER THE INTERCOM.

(No wonder everyone is getting so fat!)

Granted, I'd like to see every teacher packing heat, wired up like an informant and outfitted like a well-trained S.W.A.T. Team Member, complete with combat training and killing ability...screw any of the bully-issues.

But, I laughed when it was mentioned that the phone call goes to voice-mail and then, it's transcribed into an e-mail to boot!!!

I GAR-RON-TEE the little "snooky-wooky" type of calls are dropping in frequency...if not, they certainly are getting mentioned at the water-cooler or whereever the teachers hang out to gossip about their peers.

Just get the wifey a cellphone, have her put it on vibrate and text the messages of your heart's desire.

Then pray like hell she doesn't leave it out on the desk for some clepto-creatin to pick up and snicker about later...or you get a "Prince Albert In The Can" crank caller.

BETTER YET?

Have her teach and save the yakking for AFTER WORK!!! What's she going to do about the cat during the day anyways? She's either WORKING or she's a Stay-At-Home cat sitter.

Which pays the bills and which generates more bills?

I'll go with the paying part personally.

BTW: Not to pick on teachers, but I also think that ANY KID that's equipped with a cellphone in a school setting better be working for the FBI/CIA or Undercover for the LEOs, 'cause otherwise, that little piece of DNA is headed for a sure-fired life of repeating the phrase "Would you like fries with that?" and having to unbuckle his pants to count higher than 20. I won't go anywhere near the hygiene aspect...

pj67coll · #11 11-05-2010, 01:31 PM

My wife teaches 7th grade. All our schools are on the same network. The classrooms only have extension numbers so anyone wanting to contact the teacher has to call the school and they decide if the call needs to go thru or not. They have voice mail boxes on the extensions but it only goes to voice mail if the phone is not answered. In terms of the teachers family wanting to contact her, I agree about cell phones. There's no need to use the schools phones for that. Use the cell, or leave an e-mail. My wifes cell is always off during class hours of course so I only use e-mail to contact her. In an emergency I'd simply call the school and tell them to get a hold of her.

- Peter.

okyoureabeast · #12 11-05-2010, 01:48 PM

Phones in the school district I worked had extensions, but the secretary only forwarded calls in an emergency.

In this case, I would just get a mobile phone and use that for emergencies.

BobK · #13 11-05-2010, 01:58 PM

I dare the lot of you to try to teach in todays schools with todays rules! The stuff teachers have to put up with is unreal. If somebody comes into the room and starts shooting, I sure as hell want her to be able to shoot back! (look up Clay Shrout).
Jim, you know me better than that. I wanted the kid that made a VERY credible threat against her arrested. The school system only cares about PR. To have anything bad said about the school, especially in the media or a court is way against policy. Admin would do nothing to back her up. If it happens again, I will personally sue the little thug in a very public court. Funny thing is, even though the kid was bigger than her (6th and 7th graders come in shorter, go out taller than her), if he actually had touched her, he would have been in for big surprise. She is 4th drgree black belt, teaches Karate, and would have defended herself well.

SwampYankee · #14 11-05-2010, 02:24 PM

I don't have an issue with the phone policy since it is their phone, other than the fact that they certainly should have made the teachers aware of it.

As a business owner I would have made that known. OTOH we have a "no personal calls" policy, other than emergencies, and choose not to enforce it since it hasn't been abused even though they all have their own cell phones.

kerry · #15 11-05-2010, 02:37 PM

My point wasn't that my wife couldn't take personal calls. She has a cell phone and I would have called her on that if necessary. I was just pointing out that's how she and I figured out she couldn't get incoming phone calls during the school day. Her school policy requires that she calls the parents of every single student who is absent in her class each time the student is absent to discuss the absence with the parent. (Not saying she does this since she barely has minute to spare throughout the day). It just seems absurd to me that a school would have a policy of teachers contacting parents by phone and then institute a policy where the parent couldn't actually respond to the teacher by phone WITHOUT TELLING ANYONE. After all, it was the school itself that put the direct lines into the classroom to facilitate communication between teachers and parents.