The Lawrence school district, like many other districts in the country in recent weeks, is rethinking how it notifies the public of breaking district news.

While the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech prompted schools everywhere to evaluate emergency notification systems, the district’s own experience with a bomb threat three weeks ago hastened the school district’s search for a new way to get out information.

The Lawrence school board will discuss at its meeting Monday a proposal for a system that can make automatic phone calls to parents to let them know not only about emergencies, but other pertinent events, such as weather-related school closings.

“You can also use it to monitor attendance; it will make phone calls home if someone misses second-hour class,” said Superintendent Randy Weseman. “If the track team gets stranded in Topeka, it can call the parents.”

Among the benefits of the system, Weseman said, is that it can get information out quickly and reduces the burden that staff members endure in making hundreds of phone calls when something happens.

“If you have 200 people you have to notify, that’s a lot of phone calls for office staff,” Weseman said.

Instead, the proposed system could automatically make them all at once to phone numbers that parents register with the district.

The price tag on the system is about $30,000 with $6,000 in yearly maintenance after that.

That’s a sale price compared with what systems cost two years ago, when the district first looked into it. Weseman said the cost then was about $100,000 with $30,000 in annual maintenance.

The board on Monday likely will discuss what information should and should not be included in the phone calls.

Weseman said he doesn’t want persistent phone calls from the district to resemble annoying telemarketers.

“There seems to be a threshold where parents say, ‘This is too much,'” Weseman said. “So that’s something we’re going to have to sort through.”

Another issue with the system is getting parents to understand how to manage the information they receive from the phone calls.

Just like the district wants to avoid having office staff placing hundreds of phone calls when breaking news happens, it also wants to avoid managing hundreds of incoming calls when information gets sent out.

“Communication is a two-way street and everybody wants additional questions,” Weseman said. “We want to get the information out, but we want to be able to deal with the emergency and manage the emergency.”

Sue Morgan, school board president, said the board likely would be receptive to the proposal.

“Communication is always a big issue with parents and patrons,” she said. “And this will help us do a better job.”