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IRIS Alert Phone System
05/08/08 - 10:18 AM

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Do you know what’s going on at your child’s school?  If there is a crisis situation you’ll want to know, and quickly.  Bay District has a mass notification system to keep parents informed of any campus emergencies.

The District has had the immediate response information system, or IRIS, in place since May 2007.  They’ve used it a few times this year with incidents at Arnold, Mosley, and Rutherford, but many parents haven’t even heard of it.

In an emergency the IRIS system can reach the parents of all 27,000 Bay District students in just 27 minutes.  Those notifications go out to their home phone, work phone, cell phone, e-mail, and pager to make sure parents get the message.  The District gets that information and phone numbers from the forms parents and students fill out every year.

There are several different levels of alert.

An elevated alert yellow is for an incident on campus that might result in a media report, like a student arrest or a minor school bus accident.

A high alert orange is for a school lock down or an incident such as a teacher arrest or a school bus accident involving injuries.

The highest is a severe alert red, used for a school evacuation, a lengthy school lockdown, a severe injury or death of a student at school or headed to or from school, or an incident at school that might involve law enforcement.

The State originally funded the system for districts across the state, but as of Friday that funding was cut.  District Safety Officer Mike Jones says that means the district will need to come up with $30,000 to keep it in place.