Students in Washington state's schools are not getting the message on school intercoms
More than half of Washington state schools have not installed school intermissions in 2018, a new study finds.
And the numbers are worse in some rural districts where schools are struggling to find enough classrooms to accommodate the students.
The study by the Seattle-based Institute for Education Sciences, a nonprofit research group, shows that at least 10 percent of schools across Washington State had no intercom installed in 2018.
It found that the numbers have more than doubled since 2009, when the state first installed the system.
The study was conducted for a report published earlier this year by the state Department of Education and the Seattle School District.
The state Department has no plans to replace the system, which was last updated in 2013.
But the number of schools without a systemwide message system has remained stubbornly high, the study found.
The number of students with no messages in 2018 was 9,732.
The percentage of students who don't have messages in the system has risen from 11 percent in 2014 to 12 percent in 2018 and 18 percent in 2019.
"We are a long way from being able to achieve the goal of a world where everyone has access to a school-wide intercom," said Sarah Jansen, the institute's president and a former district school superintendent in Seattle.
"In a world with no interlocutors, the schools have lost the ability to communicate effectively with students."
At least one school district in Washington has taken a different approach.
Seattle Public Schools says its districtwide message has improved over the last decade, and the number with messages has been increasing at a faster rate than the number without.
However, the district is not equipped to handle large crowds of students and staff, so it has installed more than 3,000 school interlocuators.
Schools have also found ways to communicate with students, even if they are not in class.
They have posted signs to alert students that they are allowed to come to class if they need to leave early.
But it is still a challenge for students to hear those messages.
The institute report found that schools in the districts with the best graduation rates also had the highest rates of the worst interlocutor problems.
That includes high-poverty schools in rural areas, which are far from the school districts with most students.
The schools with the worst graduation rates had the most problems.
The school district of the Seattle suburb of Kent County, home to Bellevue, has the highest graduation rates in the state and has had the second-highest number of interlocuters in recent years.
The district has struggled with an interlocuter shortage, according to the institute report.
But the district has also seen an influx of low-income students in recent decades.
In the last few years, the number for students with the highest school achievement have increased, and so has the number who scored in the lowest percentile.
More:What you need to know about the interlocution problemA high-performing school in the district, known as Kent High, has struggled to find a way to keep students in class after the school was shut down in 2018 for several weeks because of the lack of a message system.
"We had a teacher who would walk in and say, 'Hi, I'm here to help you,'" said Jim Mazzolini, the school district's assistant superintendent.
"I'd say, I don't know.
I've been working at the school for 20 years.
This is my third time.
This time I'll be here for three days."
A district in the county's north and south that has been on a quest for an interlogger system for years said it has made progress, and it is now using a system that includes a video message.
But many of the other districts in the region have not made the same progress.
The Washington state Department for Education has said it is exploring a plan to replace Washington's school intercommunications system with one that has more robust interlocutions.
The department said the system is "committed to improving the quality of education" and that the goal is to have a message that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
But there is no guarantee that the new system will be up and running in time for the start of next school year.
Posted byadmin September 29, 2021 Posted inBrain healthTags: school intercom, utv intercom
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