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Rolla school officials are ready to keep parents informed through an SMS, or short message service, a program called SchoolMessenger.
Friday, the district tested the new program with the text and voice calls.
To prepare parents, copies of the news announcement had been given to students to take home, school officials talked about SchoolMessenger earlier to Rolla business and civic groups.
Although SchoolMessenger likely would be used extensively for alerts in the case of a security emergency, it will be used far more often for routine messages.
Inclement weather closings or warnings, early release days and key event reminders will be central to this enhanced communication effort.
The system also has additional attendance verification features.
All previous forms of communications for inclement weather (district web pages, cancellations.com, radio, etc.) will continue to be utilized, said school personnel.
To make sure the system works, on Friday, parents received both test phone calls and SMS text messages.
Purpose of the phone calls was for clean-up to see what numbers are wrong. Purpose of the text message was to give parents an opportunity to accept future texts.
Additional calls are planned. One of those automated voice calls will go out after Christmas break when the final test call is made. On that call, SchoolMessenger will give information about how parents can update their contact information from home.
The whole purpose of the addition of SchoolMessenger to the district’s services is to keep parents involved and informed.
Rolla school officials are ready to keep parents informed through an SMS, or short message service, a program called SchoolMessenger.
Friday, the district tested the new program with the text and voice calls.
To prepare parents, copies of the news announcement had been given to students to take home, school officials talked about SchoolMessenger earlier to Rolla business and civic groups.
Although SchoolMessenger likely would be used extensively for alerts in the case of a security emergency, it will be used far more often for routine messages.
Inclement weather closings or warnings, early release days and key event reminders will be central to this enhanced communication effort.
The system also has additional attendance verification features.
All previous forms of communications for inclement weather (district web pages, cancellations.com, radio, etc.) will continue to be utilized, said school personnel.
To make sure the system works, on Friday, parents received both test phone calls and SMS text messages.
Purpose of the phone calls was for clean-up to see what numbers are wrong. Purpose of the text message was to give parents an opportunity to accept future texts.
Additional calls are planned. One of those automated voice calls will go out after Christmas break when the final test call is made. On that call, SchoolMessenger will give information about how parents can update their contact information from home.
The whole purpose of the addition of SchoolMessenger to the district’s services is to keep parents involved and informed.
