Parental Notification System
| Letter for Parents 138kb PDF If you find that are not receiving messages from the notification system, please check with your child's school to make sure that your contact information in PowerSchool is up to date. |
3/15/12
The new system was initially funded by a Department of Education REMS grant. The district and each school are now able to send to parents and guardians messages via phone and email for important school information including school closings or early release days as well as reminders for key events on the school calendar such as picture day, field day, finals week, curriculum and capsule nights and conference nights.
The system is also used for attendance notifications at the high schools, as well as district-wide general notification calls. This system uses the student data that is stored in PowerSchool. Parents can log in to the PowerSchool Parent Portal to update their contact information and contact preferences.
SchoolMessenger Features:
- Emergency messaging through the system can place 10,000 calls/minute (our entire district is covered in 10 minutes)
- Automated syncing with our student information system, POS system (lunch accounts), transportation system*
- Calls for attendance (unexcused absences, tardies) and lunch balances can be auto-scheduled
- Schools can use the system to call, email text-to-cell messages** about upcoming events, late buses, school closings
- Automated language translation can pull home language code from PowerSchool and send messages in home language and English
- Survey feature allows for phone and/or web-based surveys to be taken by recipients
Anticipated Benefits/Savings:
Other districts that use SchoolMessenger have cited many positive effects from implementing the system. We anticipate that we, too, will see
- Reduced absenteeism
- Improved school-to-home communications, consistent across the district (attendance notices, upcoming school events notices, emergency closing notifications)
- Reduced mailing costs for district and schools (postage, paper/printing costs) as paper will only be sent home to those homes without ready access to phone, email or web
- Reduced outstanding lunch balances