The Backpack Network

As my kid headed back to her Atlanta public school (APS) last week, and after filling out what seemed like the hundredth paper form requesting the same contact information for our family, I put down the pen to rub my cramped, aching fingers.

I hadn’t done that much old-fashioned pen and dead-tree work since I myself was in grade school. As someone who types virtually all communications or phones them in, such tasks were a lot of manual labor, all for the purpose of creating unimaginable amounts of inputting work for whoever on the receiving end must decipher my atrocious, rarely utilized handwriting.

Then I scribbled yet another communication on some random, greasy kitchen notepad to the teacher about my child’s changing afternoon schedule. I placed that bit of scribble alongside the rest in my child’s bulging backpack and sent it off with a wing and a prayer -- through The Backpack Network. I’d have felt better if I could have sent it by Harry Potter owl.

While marginally reliable at best, the APS’s Backpack Network as chief communication device, in this time of email, the instant message, MySpace, Twitter, SMS, the YouTube debates, cell cams, webcams and iPhone, is amusingly antiquated. But it is what we are asked to use to communicate with the people in charge of our children’s school system.

While APS requires countless forms from the parent/kid end to be filled out as how best to find and contact us, they give us nothing back in return about how to contact them, unless of course you count the one email address on the (static) website for the school’s principal, and the one main phone and fax number to the chaotic school office. That’s it. There simply isn’t any more: no list of teacher email addresses; not a single cell phone number listed for a single staff member.

Why APS wants our email addresses at all is a complete mystery, as the few times I’ve tried to communicate with a staff member through email, I’ve been told to email is grossly unreliable and to “call the front office” instead.

The carpool line communication methods have even regressed, going from two-way walkie talkies to move things along last year, to written slips of paper now passed along from outside to inside. They sure could use at least a house elf or two.

So I got out the amusingly titled “Information Handbook” for my kid’s school, where I found over twelve, front and back printed, pages of paper listing schedules and rules and regs and names and places. The only communicating tool listed for APS staff was indeed -- the main phone number. The one electronic notation was for the school’s (static) website, buried way in the middle of the handbook.

I then read over the letter of welcome from the PTA President, who bravely gave out her cell phone number AND her personal email address, alongside a kindly quote that “communication is key, and the PTA offers many ways to be connected with your child’s school experience.”

And indeed, also inside the “Information Handbook” was a full list of PTA committee chairpersons’ email addresses: everything from the Gift Wrap Committee to the Family Spring Picnic! Heck, the PTA is so efficient it will include their family’s blogs and Facebook sites before long.

But parents’ regular communications needs are directly with APS school staff: the children’s teachers and the administrators, not with the 2008 Fun Run committee co-chair.

Until we need to know more about our “child’s school experience” than what time to show-up to put cones out on Field Day, we are left to the dubious efficiency of -- The Backpack Network.

Je Suis Tres Peturbed

Wonder me this… if I sent Sonny a podcast of my precious little APS rising second-grader speaking French with that fabulous tres authetic accent she now has, thanks to her brief stint of foreign language training with a real teacher, would he consider returning funding for elementary school foreign language classes back to the budget?

Precious Angel really did learn a ton of French last year, more than I ever did as a high schooler in the South Carolina public education system, I can safely say. (Yeah, yeah. I hear ya… “that’s not saying much!”)

I promise to make Sonny’s podcast more, uh, respectable than this one here. But it only comes in English because I, again, was a product of the public educational system, and I never did learn me up no foreign languages. But hey, at least I can blog.

APS Direct Marketing Crap

Something really annoyed me yesterday. Imagine that. When I opened a "newsletter" from the Atlanta Public School system (APS) branded APS Family Matters, out fell a shower of direct marketing pieces of paper trash!

I HATE being direct marketed to with crap I don't want or need. It's a waste of everyone's time and effort, except for the company getting a check from someone to WASTE our time with commercial promotional crap stuffed into envelopes supposedly containing information about our public school system and our children's education.

Here's a list of what fell out of the "newletter" yesterday. Flyers for:
1.) Vonage
2.) Snapfish
3.) Pepboys (do they even teach shop anymore in public schools? Always wanted to take shop.)
4.) http://www.ordermydish.com/ (dish tv broker thingee)
5.) ADT Security Systems
6.) Proactiv Solutions (acne treatments, but they can't even spell!)
7.) Tutor.com (APS kids might actually need this service.)

Also hiding in this entire envelope of commerical crap flyers was the itty bitty APS 4-page newsletter, with the alleged main meat of the newletter being a flimsy, seven graph "Letter from Dr. Hall" (APS Superintendent). Heck, I crank out 7-graphs of total yaya every morning here before 8am! I sure don't waste money mailing it, either.

The entire dubious content of the envelope was "brought to you by 1st Hour Communications, LLC."

I think I'm going to pay an e-visit to the 1st Hour Communications site, and have a talk with their President and COO, Scott Keller... and also call-up the APS communications office this morning. Jeez.

FOLLOW-UP: I had a very nice chat with Teretta Scope, head of Communications for APS about this issue. I asked why they felt the need to send flyers for junk around to APS households when anyone can send out an (Internet) newletter nowadays for virtually nothing.

Ms. Scope patiently explained to me that a lot of APS households don't have or use computers, meaning they are too low income to have computers I must assume.

So APS does business with these direct marketing companies, gives them our APS household mailing lists and data, in exchange for flimsy "newletters?" Allowing a company out of Colorado to pump promotional literature for a bunch of commercial crap we don't need into low income families' homes? Flyers for stuff we don't need to spend supposed non-existent disposable income on in the first place if those without computers are so darn needy and poor that they don't have computers in the home!?

Go figure the logic of that...

I say... no matter what the income level of an APS household, virtually ALL of 'em have at least one cell phone. APS: send your communications through the darn phones!

Of course someone will just clean up pumping dubious "newsletters" through cell phones at some point, when APS might could just figure out how to "communicate" with all their households without using these outside direct mail companies to do so.

As if any low income family here in the APS will ever benefit from the profits made by these marketing companies' public school system scamming techniques anyway. At least an Atlanta-based direct marketing company might have some incentive to give back to our always-desperate school system at some point in the game.


But a company out of Colorado? What's in it for them, other than APS just handing over our household data in exchange for a silly, glossy four page "newletter?"

It's a simple piece of paper you can just put in every child's backpack!!!

Or just start a blog. Jeez...

Pony Up With SPLOST 3

As much as I hate to miss a moment of good bitchin' and whining, I will also roll-up my sleeves and get to work as needed. So when I rant about media, politics, etc., chances are I'm also out there creating new media product, writing about politics, voting, volunteering, actively campaigning, etc. Lends cache and credibility for those times when we need to shoot our mouths off about whatever ails us, eh?

In that same vein of logic, I also send my kid to public school. You can't be part of the solution until you comprehend the problem from a deeply personal basis, and have a vested interest in improving it, if you ask me. Tomorrow is a chance to vote to continue funding/sales tax for APS schools with a "yes" vote in the Special SPLOSH III election tomorrow, Tuesday March 20.

Why SPLOST III?

SPLOST III could generate approximately $550 million
that would help fund the following improvements:

• Complete major renovations on 27 schools:

16 elementary schools (Boyd, Capitol
View, Fain, Lin, Dunbar, Continental Colony,
Fickett, Hill, Peyton Forest, Rivers, Kimberly,
D.H. Stanton, Venetian, Waters, Whitefoord,
Williams)

7 middle schools (Parks, Walden, Carson,
Young, Bunche, Archer, Sylvan)

4 high schools (Mays, North Atlanta,
Southside, Therrell)

• Address increased capacity needs in growing
areas of the city (elementary schools in midtown and
the northeast; middle schools in the northeast/west
and southwest)
• Install energy-efficient HVAC systems
• Update and improve security systems
• Update infrastructure to accommodate new
technology (computers, Internet, etc.)
• Resolve maintenance issues, including replacing
roofs at several schools

"With the continuation of the SPLOST 1% sales tax, everyone who shops in Atlanta helps share the costs of capital improvements. This would not be an increase in property tax millage rates."

Investing now in education and educational facilities for Atlanta's children is our legacy -- and our future. Amazing things are happening within APS. I couldn't be more pleased with my child's experience and education in the APS, so please don't just whine and bitch about "government schools" when there are so many ways to be part of the solution -- and not just part of the problem (of neglect).