Voice Mail Links Teachers With Parents : Schools: Board will be asked to approve computerized communications system. Free service for elementary schools offered as an enticement if high schools buy the service.

Schools across the city could soon be using the telephone to forge a new link between teachers and parents.

Pasadena Unified School District administrators will recommend Tuesday that the Board of Education give schools the go-ahead to begin using computerized voice-mail systems similar to those commonly used in businesses.

Such a system is operating on a trial basis at John Muir High School. It allows parents with touch-tone telephones who subscribe to the system to call a main number, enter a numerical code and hear their children’s teachers tell them what was taught in class, what homework their children were given and, in some instances, even confidential counseling messages.

“Voice mail provides a great opportunity to create better communication between parents and teachers,” said Al Fortune, Muir principal.

One other San Gabriel Valley school district also is experimenting with the QuickNet system, run by a Van Nuys telecommunications company. The El Monte Union High School District board approved a free trial in its four high schools and will decide at the end of this school year whether to pay to continue the system.

If the Pasadena school board approves the recommendation, QuickNet, which provides Muir’s system, is offering free service to Muir’s four feeder elementary schools--Longfellow, Cleveland, Willard and Jackson--and a free semester to the district’s other three high schools.

If those high schools later buy the service, the company would extend it free to their feeder schools. “We are willing to provide service free to every elementary school in the district, if the high schools and middle schools are willing to pay for service,” said Jerry Chien, president of QuickNet.

District staff members are advising that the decision on who pays for voice mail be left to each school.

Mark Facer, district business consultant, said, “Parents could pay a fee or a school could rent the system for the parents using general funds, categorical funds or funds from school boosters.”

At least two companies have talked to school principals, he added, meaning that district staff members are not endorsing a single supplier.

At Muir, a school with 1,744 students, 619 families pay QuickNet $1 a month for access to the system. The company has submitted a proposal to provide districtwide service for less than $1,500 a month.

Board member Wilbert Smith opposes leaving the fees to parents. “It’s the kind of service we shouldn’t be charging for,” he said, because only those who can afford it will have access to the service. He would prefer to redirect district funds from other areas to pay for the systems, if the benefits outweigh the costs.

The benefits already are being felt at Muir, which has been getting about 450 calls daily since the system’s installation last fall.

Fortune said voice mail means that the teachers can communicate with more parents because messages are accessible night or day. “Hard-working parents who don’t always have time to come up to the school can call up at 11 p.m. and find out how Johnny’s doing.”

Voice mail also is opening the door to “split families.” Fortune explained: “In families in which the parents are apart, both parents can know what is going on in their child’s life as far as school is concerned.”

Language is not a barrier to voice mail. Muir’s system translates all messages for parents of students in its English-as-a-second-language program into Armenian and Spanish. “Parents reluctant to come to the school because they don’t speak fluent English now know what’s going on,” Fortune said.

Though teacher use of voice mail at Muir is not mandatory, the number using it has grown to 50% to 60% of staff, officials say, and operators expect it to reach 90%.

Smith advocates mandatory participation to make voice mail work, but other board members, administrators and operators say any mandating will reduce the quality of messages.

Dan Robinson, a Muir teacher who uses voice mail, said, “Even if it helps 10% of students or less, voice mail is worth it.”