8 replies to this topic

[Bluegrass]

I noticed this morning that the new bucks cc webpage for school closures could not cope and it just gave a constant server busy message. A classic example of a simple thing working well being 'improved' and then not doing the job. I wonder how much they spent on the new look pages?

[K&P]

Yes, it was very annoying - I'd not like to be the person whose project it was!

[ThreeDaysGrace]

Same every year....

[Fran]

I would have thought that nowadays, most parents would go first to the website of the individual schools. There may be some small primaries that aren't able to update their websites remotely, but don't most secondary schools do it as a matter of routine?

[ThreeDaysGrace]

Neither of my kid's schools had anything on their websites (primary and secondary!) We did get a text at 7am from the secondary school telling the kids to wear wellies into school, so that answered that one! Is it easy to send mass texts like that? Perhaps it's something all the schools should look at!

[K&P]

Neither of my kid's schools had anything on their websites (primary and secondary!) We did get a text at 7am from the secondary school telling the kids to wear wellies into school, so that answered that one! Is it easy to send mass texts like that? Perhaps it's something all the schools should look at!

Yes, many schools use that text service. Not all parents have access to web, so maybe that's the rationale behind it. I teach at a Secondary school, and our website goes through BCC - so once that was down, apparently remote access to the site was impossible. So the text service seems the most reliable.

K

[PaulEden]

The schools closure web page has moved. See the link below for the new page.

 

Note that at the time of writing (Friday morning Jan 18th) a lot of schools are updating the page to show a closure.

 

http://apps1.buckscc...us/default.aspx

[Bawbag]

I was pretty much refreshing the Bucks page from about 6.30 until I left the house at 8am and it was always up for me. St Mary's finally updated and sent a text at 8.30ish, just I was dropping my son off!

 

On a related note, the decision to close schools at around midday was poorly made. This was bang in the middle of the heaviest forecast snow (accurate, as it turned out) and the predicted lessening of the fall by mid-afternoon meant that by 3.30-4pm the roads were pretty much clear, hence it would've made far more sense to keep the schools open until normal closing time. I could understand if the heavy snow was forecast to run into the early evening.

 

As it was, everybody had to leave work after only a couple of hours and there were far more than the normal number of vehicles on the roads around lunchtime, just when the roads were at their most unnavigable.

 

Crazy.

[Eaton]

It took my neighbour 2.5 hours to do a return journey of about 4 miles yesterday late morning to collect their eldest son. When I mentioned he could have walked across the fields (about 3 miles return journey) to get him, he was horrified that I thought it was a good idea, I'm amazed that he thought sending him to school in the first place (bearing in mind he's only 5yo and neither of his parents went to work) was a good idea and if he'd taken a sled with him they'd have had fun coming down the hill and it would have been an adventure!