Tri-District Communications

Rural school districts are islands . They have miles and miles of fields between and fewer and fewer students and resources. They also have top notch teachers, talented students, and supportive communities. These school districts have accepted the idea that sharing 'scarce resources' is a must. These resources may be transportation, text books, teachers, and support staff. Now the difficult part of school district islands sharing 'scarce resources'...communication. It can be very similar to the game that is played in an elementary classroom, called telephone. Whether it is using the telephone, email, or face to face; communication often gets lost in the shuffle. If a telephone call is made it needs to be relayed verbatim to several sources or small details like location of meeting or starting time gets left out. After making calls all morning it is difficult to remember what was said to whom. E-mail sounds fantastic but be careful with that assumption. Email messages get sent to the wrong address, tech issues happen, and who got left out of the instant forward list. Face to face is great but remember the island and miles of fields part of this post. So my solution. I have a couple but would like to hear how this issue is handled by others in other school districts.