Over the past two weeks, local schools have had a number of events where parents questioned the efficiency of the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District’s communications.
Pegge Erkeneff said many factors go into when information is distributed from the district but the top priority is delivering the most accurate information.
Erkeneff: “That’s first and foremost really important. And second, if there’s something major that’s happening, parents are going to be notified right away, we’re getting faster at that, better at that. But sometimes there’s situations we’re asked to monitor something like we did last week, schools were still open and we opted to give information at the end of the day in order to not hinder a law enforcement investigation that was simply trying to determine if something was credible or not.”
There is an ongoing investigation as to if the April 29 safety watches and the May 5th threatening call to Kenai Middle were connected; Erkeneff said she does not want to speculate but there has been no information to suggest that so far.
She said there are also other factors as to why parents may have thought they didn’t receive the same notification as other parents.
Erkeneff: “So first off they need to make sure they have their most correct information for a cell phone, land line, email, however they want to be contacted, because the district is going to use that if we reach out through our automated system as well. The second thing is schools do send out information and several schools might send out the same message from a district level but they use their own method of communication from their school and the timing might be different.”
Erkeneff said the school district has been improving their communications via social media and through the district’s app as well.
