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Power Announcement

Power Announcement

 

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 Power Announcement

 

            Power Announcement is the automated calling system used by the Lehighton Area School District. This system can notify all households in the district with a regular call within 20 minutes and an emergency call within 35 minutes.

 

            For a regular call, Power Announcement can calls up to two (2) primary telephone numbers given by the parents/guardians for their children.

  

            When Power Announcements dials and a person answers, Power Announcement waits for COMPLETE silence to deliver its message. If Power Announcement hears anything (a TV in the background, barking dog, static on the line, etc) it will wait to get silence. It is important, especially if you are using a cellular telephone, to make sure you have a short introduction on your answering machine and no extra noise on the recording. In addition, messages may NOT be delivered when the cellular telephone is in a poor reception area and/or there is static on the line (every carrier has poor and/or dead spots). If you are on the telephone when Power Announcement calls, it will try four (4) times to contact you before it stops dialing your telephone number.

 

            Power Announcement can also send out e-mails. It takes the e-mail address of the mother and father and sends the message to those e-mail addresses. Because of the mass e-mailings sometimes the e-mail might be put in the parent’s SPAM box so everyone should make sure that e-mails coming from lehighton.org is on their NOT SPAM list.

 

            At this point, you might be wondering how all these telephone numbers and e-mail addresses get into Power Announcement.  Power Announcement is embedded into the District's Student Management System, Power School. Telephone numbers and e-mail addresses in Power School and the numbers that are called and e-mails are sent to. Update of Power School are updated to Power Announcement in real-time. Because of our systems dependence on data from Power School, it is important for parents/guardians to keep the schools updated with not only changes to telephone numbers at home, but also addresses, new/updated cellular telephone numbers, emergency contacts, a child’s medical status, employment telephone numbers (especially if given as a contact telephone number). Please remember when you get a new telephone number, your old telephone number is given to someone else, and it is that old number that will be called until the school is informed of the new number and updated.

 

            While Power Announcement and the infrastructure of the telephone network (both landline and cellular) are good, they are not perfect. People still experience missed called, dropped calls, and connects via a bad line (excessive static). Missed/dropped calls made to cell phones can be caused by changes in service areas, terrain, location (for example, interior rooms have weaker reception than rooms with windows), or low battery (not enough power to sustain a call). Telephone service (both cellular and landline) has even been down for days (as during Superstorm Sandy in 2012). For this reason, the district supplements Power Announcement with the listing of closings and other urgent items with television and radio stations (listed at the end of the article) and postings on our web site, http://www.lehighton.org. No one should depend on just one system, as no one system is perfect.

 

TV stations the Lehighton Area School District notifies for important announcements;

  • TV 69 (WFMZ)
  • TV 16 (WNEP)
  • TV28/22 (WBRE)
  • TV13 (Blue Ridge)

Radio stations the Lehighton Area School District notifies for important announcements;

  • WAEB – 790 AM
  • WCTO – 96.1 FM
  • WLEV – 100.7 FM