Murphy Proposes Master School Event Calendar

Medford School Committee Candidate Christopher Murphy will propose the adoption of a centrally controlled scheduling tool for the entire Medford School Department to help reduce and prevent scheduling conflicts with various school department events and meetings.

“The current school and department based scheduling system creates real stress and disappointment for parents and students alike,” Murphy states.

According to Murphy, every school and department establishes a schedule of events, like parent teacher nights, concerts or fairs, however no one seems to be comparing schedules from school-to-school and department-to-department, so scheduling conflicts are often the norm with two or three events scheduled on the same night. Parents with children in different schools are forced to split up or in the case of single parents or couples where one parent works in the evening; a parent is forced to pick one event or child over another. High school students also find themselves in a similar predicament because two or three departments may have events scheduled for the same evening.

“It is completely unfair, especially when a common sense solution is so obvious,” Murphy stressed. “In this day of computerized scheduling software, establishing a calendar of events that minimizes conflicts is simple and easy. It is a no brainer!”

Murphy points to a situation the other night when both the McGlynn and Andrews Schools, which share a campus and parking, both scheduled parent teacher nights at the same time. The place was jammed with parents having to walk a long distance in the dark to find a parking space on the other side of the football stadium and other parents had no choice but to park up on the curb blocking the fire lanes in front of the Andrews School. “It was unnecessarily chaotic, dangerous, and completely avoidable,” Murphy added.

Calendar software, like Outlook or iCal, allow multiple individuals to schedule events. However, once an event is inputted into the calendar, it would require someone in the central office to do an override to create two events on one evening. It creates a check and balance that should greatly reduce scheduling conflicts.

– Submitted by Medford School Committee candidate Chris Murphy