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School Emergency Notification Systems - Providing Security -Increasing Response - Saving Money
School Emergency Notification Systems - Providing Security - Increasing Response - Saving Money
While true school emergencies are thankfully not a regular occurrence, the need to communicate with parents is present every day. As one of the nation's leading providers of school emergency notification systems, SchoolReach is fortunate to work with schools and districts coast to coast. Many clients initially adopt our notification system on the basis that it will provide immediate access to parents in the time of crisis or emergency - which it does extraordinarily well¬−but there is so much more we have to offer.
As you walk down the halls of your school, notice the fire extinguishers hanging in the corners. Now image your parent notification system hanging there, waiting to be used. But unlike the fire extinguisher, which really only has one use, a parent notification system like SchoolReach performs equally well as an emergency notification tool and a day-to-day parent communication and response system.
Educators who reserve use of their parent notification system for just emergencies and cancellations are missing a big opportunity to increase parent involvement. The opportunity is to expand the use of their emergency notification system to include general announcements, meeting reminders, operational messages (e.g. absentee alerts), and lunch debt notices. If handled correctly, parents will not object and the school will gain in many ways.
Most school notification systems, including ours, are sold on an unlimited use basis. As such, there is no financial penalty to schools for increasing usage. This means opportunities for cost and time-savings abound. One such example is the savings realized from replacing paper-based notifications with phone-based notifications. The savings stem from the reduction in paper consumption, ink, postage, and the labor and time to create the paper-based notifications. The combined savings can be over $0.50/sheet of paper by the time all of the associated costs are factored in. Just five sheets of paper saved per student per year would cover the cost of our notification system. We have clients that have documented saving $10-$20 per student per year meaning their return on investment is 400% to 800%.Education administration magazines concur on this topic, there are many ways to save using a parent notification system.
The savings and gains can be even more dramatic. In one case, a large charter school organization implemented our EZ Attendance notification process and reduced their unexcused absentee rate by 50%. In the process they recovered hours of staff time at each of their 60+ schools. This was a daily exercise that frustrated and demoralized the school secretaries. Using SchoolReach instead meant a 2-hour per day savings over the course of a 175-day school year. Translated into dollars, that 2-hour per day savings exceeds $7000 per school in labor expense. Total annual value of the recovered staff time exceeds $300,000! I'll let you figure out this district's ROI, but I'll tell you it's off the charts!
Let's look at another potential area of savings; do you have parents that owe your school money? Lunch debt, tuition payments, special collections and fees are all sources of bad debt that a school is often left carrying at year end. Collection calls can be stressful on staff; no one likes asking for money. Emails, letters and notes sent home can get lost, delayed, buried, deleted or ignored but a phone gets answered and parents respond to phone calls differently. Why? Because parents perceive and value phone calls from their school as very important and respond accordingly. Sure, there will always be hold outs, but notifying parents by phone as debts are incurred is extremely effective.
To sum it all up, school emergency notification systems, like SchoolReach, are so much more than a tool to announce school closings. Whether you're looking to increase parent involvement, save money and time on attendance calling, or recoup debt from outstanding balances, SchoolReach can provide you with the tools you need. Make no doubt about it, money spent on an emergency notification system is money well spent. But money spent on a Parent Communication vehicle like SchoolReach is an investment in your school's future.