"The student should be paged and brought to the office to take the call. Otherwise, someone would have to monitor the cell phone to verify it was the parent in Iraq on the line. We should welcome such calls to the school office." -- Mary Sue Polleys, county-wide, son deployed in Iraq
This seems reasonable to me. Hopefully it will be adopted.
That is not reasonable. Troops calling home from Iraq rarely have a chance to use a phone and when they do they have to wait in a line 2-3 hours and then are only given 15 minutes at great expense to them. Also connections are iffy and prone to be broken at any time. By the time the student is tracked down the 15 minutes would likely be up.
The way to resolve this is to allow all military students to have their cell phones on at all times. If it rings the teacher can verify it is the parent (and thank the parent for their service) then let the student step out to complete the call.