November 2, 2017

Re:       New Notification System and Make-up of Storm Days

Dear Parents/Students/Staff:

I hope this finds you all warm and safe with power restored.

The wide-spread power outages proved to be a challenge for the new MSAD 11 communication system.  On Monday, some parents and students received multiple phone calls and texts, while some staff members received no communication. Sending out notification messages to the public with no power or internet was clearly far from a seamless process. I apologize for any frustration the communication glitches caused you.

By Monday afternoon our vendor fixed some issues, yet we are aware other problems continue.  There is an approximate 8 second delay with the phone call voice message and the message left in voicemail cuts off the first portion of the message.  We are continuing to work with our vendor to fix these issues.  In the meantime, please don’t hang up if you receive a call from us and if you do not receive the entire voice message, please go to the district’s webpage or the new MSAD 11 App, click Central Office and Live Feed to see the entire message.  I also encourage you to make MSAD 11 – 207-582-5346 a contact in your phone to help you know when we are calling with an important message.  

Students in MSAD 11 will have to make up the school days we missed on Monday, October 30 and Tuesday, October 31 in the same way we do for snow days.  The Governors declared state of emergency does NOT mean that school days do not have to be made up.

The cancellation of tomorrow’s early release day does not make up for the two missed school days.  The early release day was cancelled because students had already missed two or three school days this week, many parents had already been challenged with childcare coverage, and for students still without power, being in school all day ensures them a warm place and a hot meal. 

The School Board meets next week and will begin discussing how to address the missed school days, not knowing how many snow days there will be this winter.

Sincerely,

Patricia Hopkins

Superintendent of Schools