Libertyville High School Uses TV Monitors to Make Announcements

Digital monitors, currently located outside the main and athletic offices, and in the cafeteria, are now being utilized as tools for relaying announcements to students at .

These new sources are designed to help get announcements to students more efficiently and effectively.

"Actually, what we’ve done is expanded where students can find (announcements), so they can have their choice," Libertyville High School's Principal Marina Scott said.

In previous years, announcements were made over the P.A. during third period classes. Last year, the administrative team came up with five guidelines to cut down on the announcements read, according to Scott.

The guidelines for acceptable announcements are: the announcement impacts the entire school; it is time sensitive, it is a big deal for the school; "if it is about large scale internal programs or meetings"; and the Moment of Silence, and Pledge of Allegiance.

Three Sources for Announcements

Now, there are three sources for students to get announcements: online, the bulletin that their third period teacher reads, and on the monitors.

"I don’t like the monitors because I like to hear things, and I have AP Chem and Link Crew, so some days I don’t go to lunch. So I don’t see them, and I don’t have time to leisurely watch them to wait for my personal announcements," junior Julianna Cervino said.

There was also some feedback from teachers who said the announcements were too long, and that there was no organization to what they read compared to what was read over the P.A.

Monitors Help Cut Down Repetition

Scott said that having the monitors help cut down on repeat announcements. For example, if a club is meeting on Friday, a student won’t hear it five times in the week until the club meets. Instead, when the club meets might be in the bulletin and posted on the monitors.

“I love that it takes less class time. I still always print off the bulletin and my students will read it. Then I always read what’s for lunch because that’s the most important thing for my third period class,” U.S. History teacher Andrea Lara said.

Thus far, there are six monitors with announcements scrolling on them: four in the cafeteria, one outside the main office, and one outside the athletic office. The school has three more it plans to put in the cafeteria this year. (They also hope to get more monitors around the school, and are open to suggestions on where to put them).

Monitor Layout 

The announcements are organized within the monitors. Major announcements, which would have been in the bulletin, are in a large square in the middle of the screen. Then on the right of the screen, there are two smaller boxes, with one for athletic announcements and the other for various CRC or Student Services announcements.

Main office secretaries Sandra Kruckman, and Kelly Brosio input all the announcements on the monitors.

Brosio gets sent announcements all day and constantly updates the monitors. Then, once a day, Brosio and Kruckman get together for about 30 minutes to discuss the announcements of that day to see if there are announcements that should be taken out, and to put more in.

“We try to make it interesting so it grabs your attention,” Brosio said.

The school is still getting used to the change.

"Like anything else, it takes some transition time," Scott said.

This article was written by Aubrey Clement, news editor with Drops of Ink, a publication written, edited and produced by students at Libertyville High School.