With the new system, 911 calls are connected not only to police but also to designated numbers within the school district so school officials are aware of them. Before, 911 calls went to police, but school administrators often found out about it when citizens would call in to find out why an ambulance was outside a particular school, he says.

IN DEPTH:

The district also takes advantage of the phone system Code Blue feature designed to summon emergency response teams in hospitals. In the district, if a teacher sets off a Code Blue, it can call for classroom support to deal with behavior problems or special help for individual students who might have personal problems, Summers says.

PC clients let staff remotely forward calls to any other phone. So on snowy days, Summers can forward calls from his work extension to his cellphone, for example. Similarly, a PC softphone can pick up calls that come to an extension in a school building, so the intended recipient of the call can pick it up if the PC is connected to the Internet.

Voicemail is sent to email accounts as audio files, and via Outlook integration, written responses can be sent to the caller's email account.