District Administration- August 2008 - (Page 44)

The Evolution of Notiﬁcation Systems ened to ﬂood the surrounding area of Valley Park. School was out for spring vacation, but oﬃcials in the Valley Park School District used SchoolReach to contact parents and families by telephone, asking for volunteers to help the Valley Park Parks Department ﬁll about 1,000 sandbags around the early childhood center, elementary school, middle school, and high school, all of which are located on one campus next to the river. The schools had suﬀered heavy ﬂood damage in 1993, so Superintendent David Knes also called parents asking them to help move furniture and school equipment to the upper ﬂoors of school buildings where they would be safe from ﬂooding. “We were able to get our message out to our speciﬁc audience almost immediately,” says Kathy Smith, director of community and public relations. Houston’s Multilingual Needs The Connect-ED system works for multilingual school districts like Houston Independent School District, where 58 percent of the district’s students are Hispanic. School oﬃcials create separate lists of Spanish-speaking students and record a separate message in Spanish for those students’ parents. Even with 70 to 80 percent of parents in Houston impoverished, most families at least have a cell phone, says press secretary Terry Abbott. In February, the district, which has 200,000 students at 300 schools, sent out a warning about a peanut butter recall. “The federal government says if you have Peter Pan and/or Great Value peanut butter you should look on the lid of the jar. If your peanut butter has a product code number that begins with the numbers 2111 then you should throw it out because it might be contaminated with salmonella,” the message stated. It also informed parents that the district had collected every child’s peanut butter sandwiches that day and replaced them with “new safe sandwiches.” That warning also went out to Spanishspeaking parents who “reacted very favorably to the peanut butter recall phone message,” says Abbott. “Many of them had no idea of the salmonella threat until they got our Connect-ED phone call.” District oﬃcials do not send out text messages because they do not want to burden parents with extra costs, Abbott explains. “Eight out of 10 of our students live at or near the poverty line,” he says. “Frequent text messages from the school could run into quite a bit of money for them.” Paying the Costs Many of the mass notiﬁcation companies charge districts a per-pupil fee with yearly contracts, while others oﬀer packages that include a certain number of 30-second phone calls (see sidebar). And still other companies oﬀer unlimited calls for a ﬂat rate because they want districts to make the most of their systems. If districts choose a company that charges per call, then district oﬃcials might only use the system for emergencies, which could make it harder for them to budget, Rabe says. “We want you to use it for attendance,” she says. “We want you to use it for outreach, and we want you to use it for emergencies.” DA Jeanne Jackson DeVoe is a freelance writer in Princeton, N.J. Emergency Notiﬁcation Systems continued and e-mails. The system is designed particularly for regular, non-emergency communications with parents and allows school administrators to deliver personalized phone or text messages to the entire contact list or to select groups. In addition, SchoolReach includes an advanced surveytaking utility, live reporting capability, and language translation. Users can also record audio messages in three ways: through a toll-free phone number, WAV ﬁle Internet upload, or via Text-to-Speech, which converts typed messages into a computer-generated voice. STN – ALERTNOW • About $1-$3 per student per year www.alertnow.com AlertNow is a fully hosted, Web-based system designed speciﬁcally for school districts. Administrators can create messages over the phone or via secure Web site and broadcast them through phones, e-mail, fax machines, or pagers, in both text and voice. The program emphasizes regular parent communications but also has capabilities speciﬁcally for emergencies. AlertNow is the only notiﬁcation system that displays “411” on parents’ caller ID when the call involves an emergency. It also includes language translation and a feature that will automatically call parents when their child has an unauthorized absence. TELEPARENT • $1.75-$3.75 per student per year www.teleparent.net TeleParent is a fully hosted, Web-based system that emphasizes regular calling to parents by teachers, not just administrators. Teachers log in and are able to select and send recorded calls very quickly and as often as they prefer. Messages can concern everything from unexcused absences, to praise for good behavior, to reminders about upcoming exams. Teleparent also has a strong emphasis on language translation and uses live translators of more than 170 languages. TeleParent’s Emergency Calling Solution is capable of contacting the general population or speciﬁc groups via secure Web site or toll-free phone number. The service supports home, work and cell phones, as well as PDAs, e-mail and SMS (Short Message Service) message delivery. Features also include unlimited emergency messaging, 24/7 availability even for live language translation, and survey taking capability. XTREMEALERTS • Roughly $2,400-$2,700 for 2,000 students, $8,000 for 20,000 students www.xtremealerts.com XtremeAlerts is a Web-based service focusing primarily on emergency notiﬁcation in a business setting, but it can also be used in a district. It also provides the capability for regular, non-emergency announcements. Typed messages can be sent to cell phones, smart phones and Blackberries via SMS, through e-mail, or via a unique Desktop Notiﬁcation function, which displays messages on all participating computer screens. Administrators can select certain groups or an entire population to contact, and live reporting gives administrators the ability to monitor the progress of an alert. 44 August 2008 District Administration http://www.alertnow.com http://www.xtremealerts.com http://www.teleparent.net

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration- August 2008

District Administration - August 2008
Contents
Editor's Letter
Letters
News Update
Curriculum
English Language
8th Annual Salary Survey
Do You Know the Drill?
The Evolution of Notification Systems
How Well Does This Web Site Work?
New Products
Problem Solutions
Technology Books
Profession Opinion
Supervisor's Opinion
Crisis Response
Speaking Out
Calendar of Events
Understanding the Times

District Administration- August 2008