Addressing a Case of P.A. Fatigue
Officials Try to Trim Morning Announcements

By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 5, 2007

Mel Riddile, principal of Alexandria's T.C. Williams High School, noticed last year that morning announcements over classroom loudspeakers were dragging on 15 minutes or more. He was exasperated at the reduction of learning time and his lack of control over the content. "We just lined kids up and let them make announcements," he said.

He knew that many educators across the country, although committed to public address systems for campus safety, were troubled by overuse of the intrusive devices. So he ordered new checking and editing rules, and soon had the loudspeaker sessions down to three or four minutes.

The same thing happened at Westland Middle School in Bethesda when Danny Vogelman, then assistant principal and now principal, noticed announcements were creeping up to 15 minutes. He began vetoing such items as a meeting announcement for the six members of the newspaper club and soon had cut the time in half.

Across the Washington area, two powerful trends are colliding over the little-researched and mostly unregulated use of classroom loudspeakers. The three big national public address system companies -- Rauland-Borg, Bogen and GE Security -- find business booming as school shootings raise security concerns. But the growing emphasis on academic achievement is leading some educators to call T-shirt sale announcements more of a distraction than they are worth.

"They are disruptive," said Josephine Baker, executive director of the D.C. Public Charter School Board. "I taught for 25 years, and I would stop and grimace when the loudspeaker came on."

Some of the smaller D.C. charter schools don't broadcast morning announcements, preferring to communicate with students through teachers and written schedules. But a survey of area schools failed to find any school system without a public address system in all classrooms. Almost all use loudspeakers each morning, and often in the afternoon.

Those who want to cut back on announcements are looking at ways to communicate by telephone, computer, messenger and electronic bulletin boards that do not interrupt the flow of a lesson.

"Many of our newer schools are using different technologies, such as in-room telephones, to conduct business such as calling students and teachers out of class," said Stacy Patterson, spokeswoman for Prince William County schools. "Also, many schools have assigned radios to administrative and other high-request staff members, such as maintenance crew and activities directors, so that they can be paged personally without disruption to educational time."

However, administrators also want to use announcements to help students practice public speaking. Some schools produce video bulletins through in-house television studios. Often, administrators find loudspeakers indispensable for dealing with some just-discovered problem.

At Westland Middle School on Wednesday, announcements began at 7:54 a.m. as teachers took attendance in first period. The daily announcers were, as usual, members of the drama program: eighth-graders Lucy Chin, Stephen Grasty and Catherina Leipold. Catherina switched on the Rauland Telecenter V Communications System. The gray metal box the size of a narrow refrigerator is the heart of a system that can cost from $10,000 to $25,000 to install. She recited the Pledge of Allegiance.

Standing in a room next to the main office, the students announced a bake sale for Unicef, a Help the Homeless mini-walk and triumphs by school softball teams. Stephen had tried to persuade Catherina to add more superlatives to her account of the boys' team's win, but she told him "that just wouldn't work out grammatically."

Scripts for the students had been reviewed by the drama teacher to enforce brevity. They would have finished in under seven minutes except that Assistant School Administrator Anika Brown had to announce that a teacher training session had switched locations, and Assistant Principal Cyrus Washington needed to address a transportation problem. It was Halloween. Students were flooding the office with requests to go home with friends on something other than their regular bus. They needed parent and school permission, he reminded them on the loudspeakers, and if a bus was too crowded, they might be disappointed.

That same morning at T.C. Williams High, Executive Associate Principal Tammy Ignacio had edited six announcements down to nearly haiku length. "Seniors! Please make sure to turn in your senior brags and baby pictures by this Friday to Mr. Reddington in Room B310," said Naomi Zuleika Thomas, the Student Council Association president. After her three announcements, she yielded the microphone to Student Council Association member Kevin Yowell, who got one item down to 14 words: "An MSA meeting will be held today in Mr. McGill's room, B314, after school."

Experts say the loudspeaker remains attractive for delivering information not directly related to reading, math and science lessons. The Journal of School Health published research last year on using public address systems to deliver nutrition messages. The idea showed promise "as an effective and appropriate communication channel," the article said, "but only in schools that are able to play messages frequently."

Some teachers are so fed up with announcements that they turn down the sound and hand out morning exercises instead. One former Houston elementary school teacher, Colleen Dippel, said she covertly cut the loudspeaker wires in her room 10 years ago because she thought the announcements wasted time. But her husband, Mike Feinberg, a co-founder of the Knowledge Is Power Program charter school network, said he would no longer take such drastic action in the nine KIPP schools he supervises in Houston.

"In this day and age, if the loudspeaker was the only way for the school to communicate a lockdown emergency, I wouldn't be applauding dismantling the speaker," he said. "As a rule, though, we do not interrupt classes unless there is an emergency."

"It's a tool best used sparingly, since you don't want it to become background noise, like calling flights at an airport," said Loudoun County schools spokesman Wayde B. Byard.

Even in school systems that have telephones in all classrooms, such as Arlington County's, the loudspeaker turns out to be superior for communicating in an emergency. Arlington schools spokeswoman Linda Erdos said administrators consulted with emergency management officials. "They advise that if we need to go into a lockdown or to evacuate a building," Erdos said, "the best method to communicate that information is to calmly announce it on the public address system."