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Texas Region 17 Education Service Center Partners with SchoolReach to Provide Schools with Parental Notification Services
ST. LOUIS, MO., June 1, 2009 - The Texas Region 17 Education Service Center (ESC) has partnered with SchoolReach, one of the fastest-growing parent notification services used among K-12 schools in the United States. Through the partnership agreement, the SchoolReach Instant Parent Contact system will be made available to the service center's member schools at an exclusive discount.
The service center is an organization created to provide services to schools in Region 17, which encompasses the 20 counties surrounding Lubbock, Texas. "Making this service available to our membership means school administrators have new tools for improving communication, trust and, ultimately, collaboration between school and home," said Kyle Wargo, executive director of ESC 17. "Now parents can receive timely, accurate information at a moment's notice, any hour or day of the week."
With its quick, three-step instant messaging process, SchoolReach allows administrators to create a brief message, select a specified list of parents, teachers, district staff, or community members, and distribute the message to the list members simultaneously. Messages can be delivered through voice, email or text messaging. In addition, the SchoolReach system offers robust reports detailing call data, such as which contacts received the message, who listened to the entire message and when the message was sent to an answering machine.
"SchoolReach stands ready to support members of Region 17 ESC via unlimited voice and email messaging in a 'best in class' communications solution," said Paul Langhorst, vice president of operations at GroupCast, SchoolReach's parent company. "With just one call, schools can notify parents about attendance issues, weather and schedule changes, community outreach initiatives, surveys, the facts behind rumors or emergencies -- and all in a matter of minutes."
ABOUT SCHOOLREACH
SchoolReach is a subsidiary of St. Louis-based GroupCast, an instant messaging notification service. From weather and schedule changes to attendance tracking and from emergency notification to rumor control, SchoolReach instantly and simultaneously delivers personally recorded messages to tens, hundreds or thousands of individuals. For more information go to www.schoolreach.com or www.groupcast.com.
ABOUT REGION 17 EDUCATION SERVICE CENTER
Region 17 Education Service Center is one of 20 regional service organizations that were created by actions of the Texas Legislature and the Texas State Board of Education in 1967. The centers are non-regulatory and each provides an array of services to support school administration and instruction. District participation in services is voluntary. The Education Service Center, Region 17's purpose is to facilitate increasing student performance, enable school districts to operate more efficiently and economically and implement state education initiatives. Public school districts included within Region 17 are located on the South Plains of West Texas. For more information, go to www.esc17.net.
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