In this age of instant communication, people expect to know what’s going on and know it now.

With that in mind, an automated phone system that costs $30,000 plus a $6,000 annual maintenance fee probably makes sense for the Lawrence school district.

The shooting at Virginia Tech on April 16 sent shock waves throughout the education community. Administrators who oversee students from kindergarten through college graduation immediately started assessing their ability to let people know when an emergency situation arose. Fortunately, the same modern technology that raises people’s expectations for “staying in touch” also allows the kind of instant communication called for in an emergency situation.

Local awareness of emergency notification needs rose after a bomb threat in the Lawrence district on April 19. Officials became acutely aware of the difficulty of issuing a districtwide statement when it wasn’t tied to snow or some other event that would cue parents and students to tune in to local news media.

Lawrence school board members decided Monday night to move forward with an automated phone system that can be used in case of emergency but also to keep parents and students informed about a wide range of school issues. It can be used to announce weather-related school closings or issue a districtwide alert. But it also can be used to let parents know that the track team has been stranded by bus trouble or an individual student has missed a class.

If it is used judiciously, such a system could open up positive communication between schools and parents. It will, as Superintendent Randy Weseman pointed out, require some judgment by school officials not to overload parents with messages and perhaps cause them to become annoyed or simply quit paying much attention to the messages.

This is an issue at the college as well as the K-12 level. Colleges that overuse automated phone systems or text messages may find that students quit tuning in, even in case of a true emergency.

There certainly will be bugs to work out in any kind of universal notification system, but, properly used, such a system should offer a new level of comfort to parents of students of all ages and perhaps a new measure of safety in U.S. schools.