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If an emergency should ever arise, Clarke Community School District is able to contact concerned citizens immediately.

Clarke has a texting and email notification system for cancellations, early outs, districtwide emergencies, lockdowns, weather alerts or other announcements.

“When you’re at work and you get a text message saying school’s out early today … it’s pretty handy,” said Marcus Kious, Clarke’s juvenile court school liaison.

Accessing it

How do people access this messaging system?

For those interested, they should go to Clarke's website www.clarke.k12.ia.us and click on the link to "sign up for the news update" on the bottom  of the front page.

They can get the email and text notifications for free. Anybody in the community can sign up for the system.

Kious said the messaging system will allow the school to get “real-time information” out to the public for emergency situations.

ALICE

Kious said he hopes more people start using the messaging resource, which is also tied in to the school implementing the ALICE training program for school shootings this school year.

ALICE stands for alert, lockdown, inform, counter and evacuate. The idea behind the training is the first people who have to respond to a shooter are the teachers and students in a school building.

Kious said the school district is going to start implementing the first steps of ALICE training, which is learning the emergency plan and knowing the safety location of where to go in a crisis.

“It’s real-time information. (It’s) how we get information out to our parents. (It’s) information out in the community as far as what’s going on and what not, in case of emergency,” Kious said. “I feel like it’s important to get that kind of information out to everybody, as far as when there’s a situation that comes up and what steps need to be taken at that time.”