We are in the process of setting up an Emergency phone contact system. Is anyone tracking this on Bio 1 or is the attributes tab a better choice? Also we are leaning toward using the student record as opposed to listing them separately on parent records.  But I have concerns about handling families who live at separate addresses.

Thanks for your insights and time,

Pat McKinley

Woodlynde School

Pat, We have used a system for years called AlertNow for sending email alerts and phone alerts. We upload queries from EE which include a variety of phone types. We do have a phone type called Emergency. When it is an emergency like school closing due to inclement weather, we broadcast to all phone types and email listings. If it is a general announcement like a parent club meeting, we just broadcast to the Home phone and Cell phone. If you like, email me directly and I will put you in contact with the person who administers this since I only do the broadcasts. I think she can help you more with the specifics on what you are looking for in EE. http://www.alertnow.com/

Pat -
We have just implemented a phone calling system - only for emergencies.  We chose to go with the home number from the student record and cell phone types from all the parent records. 
For our dual-household families, I have previously coded the non-custodial parent as "receives report cards" - but NOT "lives with student".  With that coding, I am able to place the non-custodial parents in their own column in an export.  In this case, I exported the phone numbers from all parents associated with a child record.  0nce I had the data in excel, I was able to identify the 27 non-custodial parents, copy their numbers, along with their child's info, to a new line in the spreadsheet - deleting the information for the custodial parent that appears on that line, and we were set. 
We have 530 households, with 27 non-custodial parents who live in the area.  My final doc had 557 lines of names and phone numbers.
Hope that helps. 

Candace Chesler
The Frances Xavier Warde School
Chicago, IL