What is a students' phone?

A phone a child can use

An eight-year-old forgot his sandwich at home. Another child feels unwell and wants to be picked up. A third needs to tell his mother that the ride is running late. In every cheder and every Talmud Torah there are dozens of such moments a day, and they all raise the same question: which phone will he call from?

Giving him the secretary's phone burdens the secretary. An open phone in the hallway means kids will dial anywhere. A card with a code and a password — a second grader won't remember it, and will lose the card in the first week.

A students' phone solves this from the opposite direction: it doesn't ask the child who he is. The restriction is in the station itself. It dials only numbers the administration approved in advance, and no other number.

How it works

1. The administration prepares a list of approved numbers — usually the parents' phones.
2. The station is set up in the PBX so that it dials only the numbers on the list.
3. The child picks up the handset and dials home, like on any phone.
4. If the number is on the list, the call goes out. If not, it doesn't.

No code, no card, no password. This is the principle that sets the students' phone apart from the calling card: with a card the responsibility is on the student, and with the students' phone it is on the institution.

The daily schedule: not in the middle of class

A station that works all day quickly turns into a play corner. That is why it matters that it knows the institution's daily schedule.

You can set it so that during class hours the station neither rings nor dials, and during breaks and at the end of the day it is open. Someone who calls the station during class hears a message about contact hours. This is built with time-based routing, and is easy to update when the schedule changes — Fridays, Rosh Chodesh, bein hazmanim.

Many institutions also add a simple rule to the policy: the station is placed next to the teachers' room or the secretary's office, not in a hidden corner. That way there is an adult eye nearby, without anyone having to stand next to the phone.

Which station to install

A phone in a cheder goes through more than a phone in an office will in its whole life. It gets dropped, pulled, pressed too hard. So the station needs to be simple and durable: a regular handset, big keys, no screen and no menus.

This simple phone is connected to the cloud PBX through an adapter. The adapter turns it into a full extension, with all the PBX rules — including the numbers list and the hours of operation. And if there are several stations, on several floors or in several buildings, an adapter with several ports connects them all.

A tip from the field: hang a short sign next to the station with instructions in children's language. "Pick up, wait for the tone, dial the number of home." This saves a lot of questions in the first week.

Calling card or students' phone

Some institutions combine them: a students' phone for the lower grades, and cards for the older ones. Both solutions sit in the same PBX and the same control panel.

One day in a Talmud Torah

To see how this looks in practice, let's follow a station in a Talmud Torah with a few hundred students.

• 07:45 — A child who arrived on the bus discovers he left his bag at home. He picks up the handset and calls his mother. The number is on the list — the call goes out.
• 08:30 — Classes have started. The station neither dials nor rings. A grandfather who calls the station hears a message about contact hours.
• 10:15 — During recess, a child tries to call a classmate. The number is not on the list — the call doesn't go out, and the game ends there.
• 12:00 — A child is sick. The rebbe sends him to the station, and he calls home to be picked up.
• 16:30 — End of the day. A child calls to say he is staying for an after-school club, and his father knows not to wait at the stop.

In all these moments, no staff member had to lend a phone, check whom the child is calling, or answer a call that shouldn't have come in.

What to check before installation

• Location. Near the secretary's office or the teachers' room, in a place with an adult eye nearby.
• How many stations. One station for a few hundred children will create a line at recess. In a building with several floors — a station on each floor.
• Network connection. A network port next to the station, and if there are several stations — planning of the cabling.
• Hours. The institution's schedule, including short days, so the station's hours can be built from it.
• The numbers list. An organized form for parents, and who at the institution is responsible for updating it.

Managing the list throughout the year

The numbers list is the heart of the students' phone, and it changes. A family moves, a father changes his mobile, a new child joins in the middle of the year.

• At the start of the year — collect from the parents the numbers that may be dialed, as part of the registration form.
• During the year — whoever changes a number tells the secretary's office, and the list is updated.
• At the end of the year — go over the list and clear the numbers of families who left.

And what about numbers that aren't parents' — a grandmother, a neighbor who picks up from the bus, the secretary's office itself? All of these are added to the list according to the institution's decision. It's worth deciding in advance on a uniform rule, and not handling each request separately.

The approved numbers list: how to build it right

One thing is important to understand before collecting numbers: the list belongs to the station, not to the child. The station doesn't know who picks up the handset. It only knows whether the dialed number is on its list. This means every child can dial any number on the list, including a friend's parents. In most institutions this is perfectly fine — a child calling a friend's mother does no harm — but it's good to know when deciding what goes in.

Collection. In the registration form, ask for two or three numbers per child: father, mother, and a backup number — a grandmother or a neighbor who picks up from the bus. More than three makes the list long for no benefit. Ask for the number in full, with the leading zero, without dashes; a number written as "52-1234567" or with a country code is the most common source of "you added me and it still doesn't work."

A policy in a few lines. Decide in advance and write it in the policy:

• The secretary's number and the principal's number — always on the list, so a child can call an adult from any station.
• Emergency numbers — does the station dial them, or is the rule "run to the secretary's office"? Both answers are legitimate; what matters is having one.
• Numbers of older siblings, uncles, friends — by default, no. An exceptional case is approved by the principal, not by the secretary.
• Who is authorized to change the list: one person, with a backup during vacation.

Scale. An institution with 300 students and two numbers per child reaches 600 entries, a little fewer with siblings in the same institution. This is a list you can't clean by eye. So keep your own file as well, by class, and update both: at the end of the year delete by the class that graduated, and at the start of the year add by the class that came in.

During class: what exactly happens

"The station is closed during class" sounds simple, but it has two directions, and it's worth deciding on each separately.

Outgoing calls. A child who picks up the handset in the middle of class and dials — the call doesn't go out. He hears no ring and reaches no one. In most institutions this is exactly what they want: the rule is clear, and there is no "just a second, I'm calling Mommy" in the middle of Gemara. A truly urgent case — a child who fell, a child who needs medicine — goes to the secretary's office, not to the station. That way the staff knows about it too.

Incoming calls. A grandfather who calls the station's number at ten in the morning hears a short message: "The station is active during breaks, at the hours... For an urgent matter, contact the secretary's office at...". The station itself doesn't ring, so no class is disturbed. The message should include the secretary's number, otherwise the grandfather will call again and again.

The schedule itself. This is what a typical time group for a Talmud Torah looks like — open only in these windows, closed the rest of the time:

And then come the special days: Rosh Chodesh with an early dismissal, a fast day, Chanukah with a different schedule, bein hazmanim when there are no classes at all. For each of them you update the time group in one place, and the station behaves accordingly. An institution that keeps two groups — "regular day" and "short day" — and switches between them as needed saves itself most of the updates.

Example: an installation in a Talmud Torah with three buildings

A Talmud Torah with 400 students in three buildings in one yard: a main building with the secretary's office, a building for the lower grades, and a new building for the upper grades. This is how its students' phone was built:

• Four stations. Two in the main building (next to the secretary's office and on the second floor), and one in each of the other buildings next to the teachers' room. About one station per hundred children — for a twenty-minute recess that is enough.
• Simple wall phones. No screen, with a handset on a short coiled cord. In the lower grades' building — at a height a first grader can reach.
• An adapter in each building. In the main building, an adapter with several ports for the two stations; in the other buildings, a small adapter next to the building's router. Each adapter is connected to the building's network, and from there to the cloud PBX. Between the buildings there is no need to run a phone cable — just the network, which already exists.
• One list for all four stations. Parents don't need to know which station the child is dialing from.
• Two schedules. The lower grades finish an hour before the upper ones, so the lower grades' station gets its own time group.

Launch day was done at recess: one child from each building dialed home from his station, a secretary dialed each station from her mobile during class and heard the message, and one child tried to call a friend and couldn't. Three tests, a quarter of an hour, and the system works.

What to do when it doesn't work

And if something is unclear — the control panel shows whether the station's extension is registered and from which device, and what the number's call route is. These two screens answer most questions before you call support.

Tips from the field

• A sticker on the station with the institution's name and the secretary's number: when a child dials and reaches a parent who doesn't remember which station this is, the parent sees the institution's caller ID and calls back the secretary's office.
• A one-minute monthly check. One number from the list from each station, during recess. You discover an adapter that was disconnected a week before the parents complain.
• Don't open the station "just today" during class because of a rebbe's request. Exceptions go through the secretary's office, and that way the rule stays a rule.
• Take a snapshot of the list at the end of each year before cleaning — not because the PBX loses it, but because parents ask in Tishrei, "but last year it worked."