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Message from SUperintendent, Dr. Carly Baker Improving BCCS Response Protocols & Communication Practices for School Closures
Improving BCCS Response Protocols and Communication Practices for School Closures

Posted: September 21, 2026 at 4:15pm

 

Dear BCCS Community,

As we process through the events of last week’s internet outage and school closures, district administration has completed an after-action report. While our decision to close school was made out of an abundance of caution for the safety of our students, we have heard the feedback from our collective and are committed to improving our response protocols and communication practices should an event like this occur in the future.

We have learned incredibly valuable lessons in how we must handle school closures when they occur during or at the beginning of the school day. Here are the commitments myself and our district leadership make to our families:

  1. Audit and improve our physical and communications infrastructures 
    • We’ve identified improvements to our physical infrastructure that would allow us to run programming without the internet and still be able to communicate throughout the buildings in the event of an emergency.
       
    • We are auditing and improving our communications systems to ensure that all staff and parents receive emergency closure communications. This would include our Synergy contact information running seamlessly to our mass communication systems and re-establishing our Zoom phone coverage procedures for forwarding family calls through the Zoom phone application. Upon finishing our after-action procedures, we found several instances where only one of two custodial parents/guardians received district communications so we will continue to audit our systems and work with you, our families, to ensure your communication preferences and contacts are up to date in our system.
       
  2. Clear internal communications between district administrators and site staff
    • This experience showed us that while closure decisions are being made quickly, we must be able to slow down to provide clear, accurate, and actionable information to our building staff, programming staff, transportation vendors, and child care staff.
       
    • We’ve identified communication gaps between our administrative teams and our transportation vendors. These gaps will be addressed should an issue like this arise in the future.
       
    • We will be re-defining the responsibilities of all of our employee roles in relation to communicating with families and supporting students throughout the closure process to ensure we have a clear plan of action should this happen again.
       
    • We will utilize a clear way to check and confirm students’ arrival and dismissal plans that day. For example, if a student gets dropped off from the bus that morning but is scheduled for parent-pick up in the afternoon, we must be able to ensure a safe and timely hand off.
       
  3. Clear external communications with our families and community
    • Moving forward, we commit to having a clear subject line for district messaging. For example, when we have a school closure message sent out, the subject line could read “Immediate Action Required: School Closure Due to XYZ on DATE”.
       
    • We commit to providing clear and actionable information on pick up procedures, transportation expectations, and a custodial/emergency contact adult hand off verification to our community.

If you have specific concerns about this experience, please contact your principal so we can connect with you further. I also invite you to log into ParentVue and to review and update your contact information with us. 

The safety of our students and staff is, and always will be, our top priority. We know we have work to do to rebuild your trust. We are committed to doing so by coming to the table ready to listen, learn from our mistakes, and partner with you in your child’s education. 

Sincerely,

Dr. Carly Baker, Superintendent