Veronica, this fascinates me. We have an emergency call system at the school where I work and it is never used unless-- you guessed it-- there's an emergency. They test it once a year and warn staff and families of the testing via e-mail beforehand. All other news and announcements for families are sent through electronic newsletters.

It seems like overkill to me to use it weekly for BS. Like others have said, it also makes it less effective in the case of a real emergency or urgent situation. Last year we had a suspicious package left in a suspicious place so we had to dismiss the kids early... imagine if parents ignored the call because they got the calls so often? My goodness.