Dear parents, Last month our School Community Council discussed the increasing frequency of adults calling the school to give messages to their students. We discussed the policy below yesterday at our meeting. We are increasingly concerned with the number of messages the school office is delivering to students on a daily basis. There are a couple of concerns associated with delivering phone messages during the school day. 1. It is a constant disruption to teaching in the classroom. 2. It is a safety concern. We are trying very hard to reduce interruptions in classrooms. As a teacher or a student, when a lesson is disrupted it interferes with the teaching and learning in the classroom that affects everyone in the room. It is a safety concern because there is no way to verify who is conveying the message to the child. To prevent these two things from happening at Elk Run we are no longer going to be able to convey telephone messages to children during the school day. We ask that you ensure that children know who will pick them up in the morning before you send them to school or that they know how to get home before you send them to school. There was an incident at a nearby school this year where someone with no authority over a child called to give them a message. This turned out to be someone who should have never contacted the child but the school delivered the message. We are working very hard to ensure that all of our students are safe all of the time and not delivering messages during the school day will help us with that. In emergency situations we encourage you to contact your child’s teacher through email or Class Dojo. Thank you for your understanding as we work to enforce this new policy on March 2, 2020. Our staff will extend a grace period through March 6 with no messages permitted beginning after March 9. Please contact Mrs. Wells with any concerns. Thank you, Mrs. Wells