Epiphany in Baltimore is frustrated that parents are not just a phone call away. Limited resources left the inner city teacher struggling to find a way to connect with students’ parents:
At school this year, parental contact is nearly impossible. I have no phone in my room. ... To call parents at home, we must use the English department phone. However, the line out was inadvertently cut a few weeks ago by custodial services, and now there is no way to call out from that office. Therefore, I had to go to the main office, and speak in the very public area there while I had a 25-minute, intermittently angry phone call with a parent.
He can’t use his cell phone because of poor service and dropped calls in the school building. The lack of a phone line poses security issues as well; he had to run to tell administrators about a fight that broke out in the hallways.
Epiphany suggests this solution:
When the new contract this year is negotiated, I wish this would be written in -- that the school should provide a convenient line out for teachers to administer parent contact. It's just not fair to expect parental contact and then not give teachers the access to do it.