The Lawrence school district is ready to call parents at a moment’s notice using its new emergency notification system.

After the district- and countywide bomb threats last April following the massacre at Virginia Tech, the district wanted to determine a way to contact parents and schools quickly in case of emergencies.

“What we found ourselves doing is trying to contact schools and parents, and it took a lot of people and it took a lot of time,” said Rick Gammill, district director of special operations.

Under the new program, parents will receive a phone call to the two main numbers listed in their child’s information. The call is a recorded message from the district or the school principal letting parents know all the information available about an incident at the time. The system will try to call each number four times. The system also reports to the district what numbers answered, had answering machines, were disconnected or were busy.

The system costs $33,000 and each call through the emergency system costs the district 17 cents. The in-school system will be free for the district.

The system had its first test two weeks ago after a threatening note was found in a fifth-grade classroom at Woodlawn School. The usual method of sending home a note with students wasn’t going to work because students were already home for an early release day.

“We felt it was imperative to get information to the parents as quickly as possible and so it was a good situation, an excellent situation, we felt, to use that emergency system,” Gammill said.

In the Woodlawn situation, the

nonemergency system was used because it was not a districtwide concern. However, the district’s information and technology department is still working on the in-school, nonemergency version of the system. Gammill said he is hoping it will be ready to be used in January.

Gammill said calls worked smoothly. The system was able to call about 250 parents in just under 12 minutes.

But some parents’ phones didn’t ring.

“I did not get a phone call,” said Susan Helm, who has two children at Woodlawn. “Neither did the kids’ father.”

But she thinks the system just needs to be tweaked.

“Figure out where the problems are happening to make sure that all the parents ensure a phone call in a situation like that,” Helm said.

For others, the goal was accomplished.

“I think they need to be more forthcoming with a little more information when they send out the messages, but other than that there it did work as far as I’m concerned,” said Howard King, who has a second-grader in the school.

An important aspect of the system is to use it only when it’s needed, Gammill said.

“We don’t want to get to the point where we’re calling every time there’s a school play or a school program but we do want to use it whenever necessary,” he said.

Gammill also said the system will only be as good as the information the parents give to the school and is put into the system. Plus, parents don’t need to be worried about getting multiple calls.

“What you’re going to get is one call,” Gammill said. “That would be kind of irritating if you have three children and received three different phone calls to notify you.”