ALERTNOW Rapid Notification Parent Overview
Information about System Used to Notify Parents of School Closings and Emergencies
February 05, 2007
WAHOO PUBLIC SCHOOLS have been using ALERTNOW for a number of years to substantially improve its ongoing parent notification and communication. Ninety-nine percent of parents with school age children can be reached reliably using a telephone. Your school's selection of ALERTNOW shows its commitment to you, the parent, and to your child's education and safety.
ALERTNOW Rapid Notification Parent Overview
What is ALERTNOW?
ALERTNOW is a web based rapid notification service that allows your school to contact thousands of parents or guardians simultaneously. Using ALERTNOW, your school has wisely avoided paying for any hardware or software that would require constant attention and expense: ALERTNOW is provided as an ASP (Application Service Provider), so that ALERTNOW is responsible for hosting all of the hardware, software, and phone lines. Therefore, ALERTNOW works even when local power. Internet or local school phone lines are inoperable.
How do I, as a parent with students in the school, benefit from ALERTNOW?
The single most important benefit is that ALERTNOW rapid notification will reach thousands of parents at rates up to 6,000 calls per minute, and without using the school's phone lines. This capacity means that you will receive information when you need it, and when it is most effective. For example, if your school is using ALERTNOW to contact parents of absent children, your school now has the ability to call you in the morning to inform you that your child is not in school. Manual calls or those from hardware auto dialers typically reach parents throughout the day and often not until evening, and with different parents getting calls at varying and inconsistent times. If a school schedule is abruptly changed, you and every other parent will know immediately and be able to plan your schedule accordingly. In a potentially dangerous situation, the ALERTNOW emergency telephone notification is the most robust crisis communication tool available. ALERTNOW will allow the school to deliver critical first hand information to you that will improve the safety of the students, staff, and parents.
In addition, the selection of ALERTNOW is proven to be the most cost-effective medium to improving parent communication. Your school's fiscal responsibility saves your tax dollars.
How can I help the school's efforts to improve communication with parents?
The first and most important thing a parent can do is to ensure the accuracy of their contact information, including telephone numbers. In the past several years, it has been increasingly common for a family to establish a primary, reliable, secure telephone, often a cell phone, where they prefer the school notify and communicate with the parents. For example, if a school is using ALERTNOW rapid notification to call the parent when a student is absent, a call to a parent's cell phone is more quickly received and less susceptible to be intercepted or lost.
How do I ensure that my contact information is accurate?
The parent or guardian can verify the accuracy of their contact information by visiting or calling the school at anytime during normal school hours. If you have several students in the system at different locations, the information at each location should be double-checked for accuracy. Then, remember to promptly update the information at the school if a phone number changes in the same way that you usually update a change in address.
How will my educational institution use ALERTNOW?
Some schools use ALERTNOW primarily for emergency telephone notification and crisis communication to parents. Others use ALERTNOW to replace manual telephone calls for more routine notifications. For example, often telephone calls to parents are placed one by one by the school's employees or parent volunteers. Other schools supplement their in house auto-dialers with ALERTNOW to compensate for their auto dialers limitations. ALERTNOW utilizes a nationally distributed network of data centers and emergency call centers to ensure you receive the school's telephone calls. Often, ALERTNOW's robust capability allows the school to retire their in house auto dialers and avoid upgrades and maintenance completely.
What are some examples of routine notification?
Routine notification calls can either be those that need to be placed immediately or scheduled in advance but do not directly affect the safety of students, staff, and parents. In the past, schools would place these calls manually by staff, parent volunteers, or both. Using a manual call tree or auto dialer (an auto dialer is a device that schools in the past installed to use their phone lines to call parents) is not only cumbersome and rife with potential errors, but it is also very slow. Now, with ALERTNOW, your school can call you to remind about important events such as upcoming events, tests, power outages, delayed school bus routes, unexpected field trip arrival or departure changes, or even weather related closings. All this is in addition to the automated attendance calls now being handled quickly, efficiently, and equitably. Routine notification telephone calls will usually display the caller ID of the school or district.
What are some examples of emergency notification?
Emergency notifications are used during critical incidents where a child, staff or parent's safety is in immediate jeopardy. Examples of crisis communication include lockdown, evacuation, and relocation. These calls will have a unique caller ID that includes the digits "411" so that you recognize the urgency of the call.
How does the school know that I have been contacted?
ALERTNOW automatically creates a log of every phone call, by category and provides real time reporting of how the call was processed. The school will know whether the call was answered live or by a machine. Calls that are not answered or receive busy signals are retried up to five times before being logged as such on the call report.
Who activates the ALERTNOW system?
Only authorized administrators on the school and district level may activate the system. For security purposes, each caller must correctly identify themselves and their institution to activate ALERTNOW. Usually, the school board or superintendent allows select district administrators activate calling lists for any combination of schools throughout the district. In addition, the district often allows each principal to use ALERTNOW to contact the parents and staff of their individual school.
How many phone numbers per family or staff member can I give you?
You may have up to 5 phone numbers for use in an emergency. ALERTNOW highly recommends that you designate one primary number for routine notifications and when the school needs to contact you directly about a matter involving only your child.
Are the names and phone numbers we give you safe?
Saf-T-Net keeps all of its client's information confidential and secure. The data is stored on a 128 Bit encryption server, which is the equivalent level of security to that used by banks to secure financial and customer data. All data is password protected and accessible only by school administration.
