Interactive Snowday Notification
Justin Bathon on Monday, January 24, 2011 at 9:20AM One of the things that has caught my eye this winter is the use of Facebook to notify parents of school closures. In particular, the comment option on Facebook posts has be used frequently by parents to give their two cents on the decision. Today, for instance, my local district, Fayette County Public Schools, has cancelled. It's borderline today (my kids preschool stayed open), so the comments are pouring in and the discussion is intense.
I've noticed that districts have been dealing with this differently on their Facebook pages. Consider that FCPS is responding to some, not to others, but doing so from a professional district account. Also, the responses are coming from FCPS' PR department. After a series of tough comments on the decision, FCPS made this response:
A different way of dealing with this comes from another large district in Kentucky, where the Superintendent himself posts the notification and responds to comments (and gets the spam):
Of course, other districts can either post nothing at all, or just refuse to respond to comments. I'm not sure what the best procedures are, but it has been extremely interesting this year (because of the frequency of snow days and the tipping point Facebook has seemed to cross). Either way, it is a very interesting new conversation taking place between school officials and their communities.
Even though there is lots of potential for abuse and legal issues, generally, I think this is a good thing. And, if this is the icebreaker (pun intended) for districts utilizing Facebook pages more broadly both with communities and with students, then I am happy to see it.
Reader Comments (2)
I, too, find this interesting. My current thinking (always subject to change), is that if districts are going to use social media such as Facebook or Twitter, then they have to respond to comments/replies. I don't think it matters so much whether it's a "district" account or a "personal" account like the superintendent's, as long as it's clear that it's coming from the district. And I, too, think this is a great way to interact with the community and make our thinking more transparent.
While I think there's a huge downside to using these accounts and not engaging in the conversation, I also worry about the time necessary to manage them. My district has talked about having sanctioned school-specific Facebook pages to use as a PR tool, possibly in conjunction with the PTO. While I think that's a great idea, I asked who was going to be responsible for monitoring and replying to anything posted there. That would typically fall either to an administrator (or perhaps the person in my position), and those positions are already overwhelmed with responsibilities, so it's a concern. But I still think it's an avenue that we need to explore, and a communication channel that's going to be critical for schools and communities.
Our experience in Fayette County today may illustrate that paying attention to social media comments may be a double-edged sword. On Monday, school was cancelled here in Lexington based on a 3:00 AM decision that turned out to be wrong. On the Facebook page, many angry comments appeared. Today, both the forecast and the conditions in the morning were much more danagerous and would have called for school cancellation for sure--I know because I drove to work in the conditions early in the morning and nearly slid off the road several times. Yet the district did not cancel or even delay school. I think they may have been intimidated into making what could have been a disasterous decision by the many angry comments. This is speculation, of course, but no neutral principle would justify cancelling on Monday and operating under normal procedures today. I am still a bit nervous about school district management communicating through two-way social media, and today's experience did not help decrease that nervousness.