St. Andrew to Automate School Closing Notifications

BY ADAM TESTA, The Southern

Friday, July 18, 2008 5:05 PM CDT

MURPHYSBORO -- With a winter filled with ice storms and inclement weather, St. Andrew Catholic School in Murphysboro often had to close early and without advance notice last school year.

In those cases, school officials had the task of calling parents and informing them of the change. By the time the new school year rolls around, this won't be a problem anymore.

The school recently entered into a partnership with GroupCast Messaging Systems, a company that provides automated call notifications. With this system, a school official would be able to record a message and send it out to the cell phones and landlines of all parents with children in the school.

"We had to do a lot of calling," said Principal Nancy Borgsmiller. "This will make it easier for us to contact everyone."

After the calls are automatically made, the system generates a report that tells officials which parents answered, when an answering machine picks up and whether those who answered listened to the entire message.

"Schools struggle with day-of or night-before notices to parents; SchoolReach serves this need perfectly and requires no hardware, software or phone lines for use," said Paul Langhorst, vice president of operations for GroupCast, in a statement. "We are very pleased that St. Andrew School recognizes the need for such a communication tool and has selected GroupCast as its partner."

Borgsmiller said the school has looked at similar notification systems in the past, and grant money from the state allowed for the system to be purchased this year.