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Our Lady of Grace Using Notification System
Aug 03, 2008 08:58PM
By Reggie Jarrell, rjarrell@qconline.com
Our Lady of Grace Catholic Academy in East Moline has a new system that will make getting messages to parents easier and quicker.
The SchoolReach progrom, invented by St. Louis-based GroupCast, is Internet-based and allows the school to send messages to parents at their work, home and/or cell phones, through e-mail and as a text message.
The system can be used for everything from emergency situations and general announcements to monitoring attendance or notifying parents of weather-related issues.
"I think it's just one more way for us to communicate with parents and make sure that parents feel that their students are in a safe place," principal Joe Flaherty said.
The school has about 200 students from preschool to eighth grade.
Mr. Flaherty learned of the system several months ago in a training session. The system is "up and running," and a general announcement trial run is planned before mid-August.
"It will establish another channel of communication between the school and the home," Mr. Flaherty said. "Parents want as much information as they can get in a situation so they know what's going on with their children."
An incident a few years ago with a neighborhood gas leak alerted officials to the need for an improved mode of communications with parents. There was a phone system in place, but staff soon discovered how labor intensive that was.
The new system will change that.
Paul Langhorst, co-founder and vice president of operations for GroupCast, said the web-based communications system requires no hardware, software or telephone lines, and can handle 600,000 calls per hour.
According to the Web site, www.schoolreach.com, school officials provide contact information to SchoolReach through a "secure connection,'' and it's distributed. The SchoolReach "Message Center" allows up to 99 different pre-recorded messages to be stored, which can be used repeatedly or saved.
More than 6,000 schools or school systems across the country use the system, including more than 200 in Illinois. System costs range from $2.50 - $3.50 perstudent per year.
Mr. Langhorst said it was a personal situation that sparked development of the program.
He was working in another aspect of telecommunications and his child's school canceled classes because of a water-main break, but he didn't receive the message. When he learned of the situation and arrived at the school, his child was the last one left and was upset.
He decided there had to be a better way to relay information to parents, so he helped establish GroupCast, and developed the SchoolReach program, which he said is popular with schools and parents. "They love it. Parents rave about it. It's a win-win situation. It's delivering peace of mind and control in a way they didn't have before.''